OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE* 


OURSELVES 
AND    THE     UNIVERSE 

Studies  in  Life  and  Religion 


BY 

J.    BRIERLEY,    B.A. 

("J.  B.") 


THOMAS    WHITTAKER,     2    &    3,    BIBLE     HOUSE. 

1903. 


AUTHOR'5     NOTE. 

I  HAVE  given  to  the  following  Studies  the 
title  they  bear  because  it  expresses  the  fact 
which  all  religious  thinking  needs  to  recog- 
nise, that  spiritual  teaching  must  henceforth 
be  a  cosmic  teaching.  The  facts  and  ex- 
periences on  which  religion  is  based,  if  they 
are  to  make  to  us  their  legitimate  appeal, 
must  be  set  in  the  framework  of  that  new 
Universe  which  modern  research  has  opened 
to  us.  The  themes  discussed,  as  will  be  seen, 
are  sufficiently  varied,  but  it  will  be  found, 
I  believe,  that  they  are  united  in  this  one 
conception. 

J.  B. 


2031151 


Contents. 


MM 

I. — A  Boomier  Universe 1 

II.— The  Divine  Indifference         10 

III.— Truth's  Spiritual  Equivalents           19 

IV.— The  Inwardness  of  Event*     29 

V.— The  Sins  of  Saints        39 

VI.— The  World's  Beauty 4,9 

VII. — Of  Face  Architecture 59 

VIII.— Westward  of  Fifty        69 

IX. — The  Art  of  Happiness 79 

X. — The  Mission  of  Illusion          87 

XI.— The  Soul's  Voice          97 

XII.— Of  Sex  in  Religion        106 

XIII. — Of  False  Conscience 116 

XIV. — Religion  and  Medicine            126 

XV. — Spiritual  Undercurrents         135 

XVI. — On  Being  Inferior        145 

XVII.— Our  Contribution  to  Life        153 

XVJIL— The  Gospel  of  Law       162 

XIX. — Life's  Healing  Forces 170 

XX.— Of  Fear  in  Religion      180 

XXI.— Our  Moral  Variability 188 

XXII. — The  Escape  from  Commonplace        ...         ...  196 

XXIII.— Of  Spiritual  Detachment       206 


viii  CONTENTS. 

•Mi 

XXIV.— Life's  Present  Tense           215 

XXV.— A  Doctrine  of  Echoes         224 

XXVI.— Of  Divine  Leading 234 

XXVII.— Amusement 244 

XXVIII.— Dream  Mysteries      253 

XXIX.— The  Spiritual  Sense            262 

XXX.— Our  Thought  World           272 

XXXI.— Morals  and  Eternity            282 

XXXII.— The  Christ  of  To-Day         292 

XXXIII.— The  World's  Surprises        302 

XXXIV.— Life's  Exchange  System 812 

XXXV.— The  Spiritual  in  Teaching 823 

XXXVL-Behind  the  Veil                                           ,  332 


OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 


A   Roomier   Universe. 

OUR  English  winter  compensates  for  its  gloom 
and  rigours  by  offering  us  now  and  then  a 
night  of  extraordinary  splendour.  The  solitary 
country  wayfarer  has,  on  these  occasions,  his 
gaze  irresistibly  drawn  by  the  solemn  mag- 
nificence of  the  spectacle  above.  He  is 
tempted  to  forget  earth  while  he  has  speech 
with  the  constellations.  The  starry  hosts, 
"  that  great  and  awful  city  of  God,"  gleaming 
with  a  lustre  rare  in  these  latitudes,  send  their 
mighty  message  straight  to  the  heart.  From 
the  beginning  men  have  pondered  that  message. 
The  earliest  theologies  have  been  astronomical. 
The  European  and  classical  names  for  God  go 
back  to  the  old  Sanscrit  word  for  the  sunrise. 
Stonehenge  is  a  temple  of  the  sun,  and  our 

1 


2  OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEKSE. 

leading  ecclesiastical  festivals  of  to-day  are  bap- 
tized survivals  of  customs,  existing  in  the  dawn 
of  history,  which  had  their  origin  in  observed 
movements  of  the  heavens. 

To-day  our  theology  is  again  being  touched 
from  the  stars.  The  telescope  has  proved  a 
veritable  instrument  of  revelation,  and  what  it 
has  revealed  stirs  our  inward  life  to  its  centre. 
Since  it  began  to  sweep  the  heavens  man  has 
had  to  domesticate  himself  in  a  new  universe. 
In  his  earlier  thinking  creation  was  a  compara- 
tively snug  affair.  The  earth  was  its  centre 
and  man  its  raison  d'etre.  Our  planet  was  the 
fixed  point  round  which  everything  revolved. 
The  sun  was  created  to  give  man  light  by  day, 
the  moon  and  stars  to  shine  on  him  by  night. 
At  a  handy  distance  above  him  was  a  paradise 
for  the  good,  and  beneath,  within  equally  easy 
reach,  an  avernus  for  the  wicked.  The  as- 
tronomer has  overturned  this  theology  for  us. 
The  scene  he  discloses  is  one  in  which  our 
earth  is  found  to  be  the  insignificant  satellite 
of  a  sun  nearly  a  million  times  bigger,  but 
which  in  its  turn  is  only  a  speck  in  the  sur- 
rounding immensity.  He  talks  to  us  of  fifty 
million  stars  as  visible  with  the  telescope,  each 
one  a  mighty  sun,  the  centre  probably  of 


A  EOOMIER  UNIVERSE. 


planetary  systems  full,  for  aught  we  know,  of 
conscious  life.  He  describes  the  distances  of 
these  worlds  by  the  centuries  of  years  which 
it  takes  light,  flying  at  its  rate  of  inconceivable 
swiftness,  to  cross  the  gulf  between  themselves 
and  us ;  or,  what  is  not  less  bewildering,  by 
showing  us  that  a  star  viewed  by  us  in  January, 
and  then  again  in  June,  when  we  are  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  million  miles  from  our  earlier 
standpoint,  has  not  altered  its  apparent  position 
by  a  hair's-breadth.  "We  are  indeed  the  deni- 
zens of  a  roomier  universe  ! 

But  the  point  for  us  here  is  in  the  effect 
which  this  immense  widening  of  the  human 
outlook  has  had,  and  is  likely  to  have,  upon 
man's  religious  conceptions,  and  his  accompany- 
ing spiritual  life.  The  first  result  has  been 
undoubtedly  one  ef  profound  disquiet.  It  is 
hardly  worth  while  to  blame  the  Church  for 
her  treatment  of  Galileo.  She  was  acting  here 
strictly  in  accord  with  average  human  nature, 
which  dislikes  nothing  more  than  to  be  turned 
from  its  old  familiar  thought-habitations  into 
a  fresh  one  to  which  it  is  not  yet  accustomed. 
Man  is  bound  to  the  old  mental  home  by  a 
thousand  ties,  and  suspects  that  he  will  catch 
his  death  of  cold  in  the  new.  Our  religious 


4  OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

teachers  are  a  long  way  yet  from  having  got 
accustomed  to  the  roomier  universe.  Hazlitt's 
gibe  that  "  in  the  days  of  Jacob  there  was  a 
ladder  between  heaven  and  earth,  but  now  the 
heavens  have  gone  farther  off  and  are  be- 
come astronomical,"  suggests  a  problem  that 
still  puzzles  sorely  many  an  honest  pulpiteer. 
A  well-known  popular  preacher,  in  a  sermon  on 
heaven,  laid  it  down  as  a  leading  proposition 
that  heaven  was  a  place  above  us,  and  cited 
passages  of  Scripture  to  prove  that  the  depar- 
ture of  the  glorified  was  always  an  ascent.  In 
this  argument  it  seemed  to  ha\  e  been  forgotten 
that  an  "ascent"  from  London  and  an  <f as- 
cent "  from  Melbourne  would  take  the  "  ascen- 
ders" in  exactly  opposite  directions.  "  Above  " 
and  "  beneath,"  so  far  as  space  and  locality  are 
concerned,  have  been  emptied  of  their  meaning 
by  astronomy,  and  it  is  time  that  religious 
teachers  of  all  persuasions  took  account  of  so 
elementary  a  fact.  What  is  the  exact  signi- 
ficance for  the  inner  life  of  this  feature  of 
the  astronomical  revelation  we  may  inquire 
presently. 

Meanwhile  it  is  worth  observing  that  the 
mental  confusion,  and  one  may  say  distress, 
which  the  breaking  down  of  the  older  concep- 


A  ROOMIER  UNIVERSE. 


tions  has  caused,  is  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  ecclesiastical  world  or  to  mediocre  minds. 
It  has  been  felt  in  an  acute  degree  by  thinkers 
of  the  first  order.  The  cry  of  Pascal,  "The 
eternal  silence  of  the  infinite  spaces  terrifies 
me,"  is  echoed  by  our  own  Watson  : 

But  oftentimes  he  feels 
The  intolerable  vastness  bow  him  down, 
The  awful  homeless  spaces  scare  his  soul. 

Carlyle,  too,  was  dominated  by  this  feeling 
when  a  friend  whom  he  had  accompanied  to 
the  door  of  his  house  at  Chelsea,  and  who  had 
pointed  to  the  brilliant  starlit  heavens  as  "  a 
glorious  sight,"  got  from  him  the  reply,  "  Man, 
it's  just  dreadful !  "  It  is  evident  that  even 
the  highest  human  thinking  has  not  yet  become 
fully  acclimatised  to  immensity. 

And  yet  the  signs  are  multiplying  that  we  are 
at  the  dawn  of  a  new  and  better  conception. 
Man  is  already  feeling  his  way  about  in  this 
larger  habitation,  and  we  may  predict  that 
by-and-by  his  inner  life  will  be  not  only  entirely 
at  home  in  it,  but  gloriously  free  and  exultant. 
As  a  proof  of  this  let  us  note  here  one  or  two  of 
the  elements  which  the  new  conditions  are 
causing  to  emerge  in  our  spiritual  consciousness. 

It  is  infinitely  reassuring,  to  begin  with,  to 


6  OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

realise  that  to  the  uttermost  verge  of  these 
vast  spaces  we  find  not  only  everywhere  the 
presence  of  Mind,  but  of  the  same  Mind. 
The  laws  of  light  and  heat  and  gravitation 
which  obtain  in  London  obtain  in  the 
Pleiades.  The  same  King's  writ  evidently 
runs  throughout  the  whole  Empire.  The  old 
Eoman's  pride  and  sense  of  being  at  home 
when,  in  farthest  Britain  or  by  the  remote 
Euxine,  he  saw  the  flash  of  Home's  eagles 
and  heard  the  tramp  of  her  legions,  is,  in  a 
finer  way,  reproduced  in  loyal  souls,  who  to- 
day find  the  Power  they  adore  exercising  a 
sway  which,  at  no  furthest  remove  in  this 
stupendous  whole,  is  contravened.  If  the 
universe,  through  all  its  suns  and  systems, 
knows  but  one  Master  of  the  House,  who  is 
already  known  to  us,  there  is  enough  here 
surely  to  thaw  out  all  the  chill  of  strangeness 
and  to  make  the  cosmic  spaces  to  their  utter- 
most reach  friendly  and  homelike. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning.  There  is 
immense  spiritual  inspiration  in  this  other 
message  of  the  telescope,  that  life  altogether 
is  larger  than  our  fathers  imagined.  For  the 
idea  grows  upon  us  that  if  the  material  realm 
of  which  we  form  a  part  is  so  much  vaster  than 


A  EOOMIEE  UNIVERSE. 


we  deemed,  so  in  like  manner  must  be  that 
spiritual  realm  to  which  we  also  belong.  That 
our  poets  and  philosophers  should  sing  and 
write  as  though  creation's  greatness  spells 
man's  littleness  is,  when  one  thinks  of  it,  the 
oddest  perversion.  It  supposes  that  we  are 
dwarfed  by  the  immensity  of  the  whole, 
whereas  it  is  this  very  vastness,  properly  con- 
sidered, that  enhances  the  worth  of  our  own 
life.  For  we  are  not  only  in  the  universe,  but 
the  universe  is  in  us.  It  plays  through  us,  find- 
ing in  the  soul  the  organ  of  its  consciousness. 
The  greater  the  whole,  the  mightier  the  throb 
of  its  pulsation  through  us  who  are  its  parts. 

More  than  that.  The  greater  the  universe, 
the  greater  its  Maker.  The  dimension  of  the 
one  helps  us  to  conceive  the  proportions  of  the 
other.  But  in  a  great  nature  it  is  ever  the 
moral  quality  that  counts  most.  If  God  in 
these  later  ages  has  astonished  us  by  the 
revelations  of  His  material  side,  what  sur- 
prises may  He  not  have  in  store  on  the  side 
that  is  spiritual?  If  His  power  is  expressed 
in  the  worlds  that  populate  the  Milky  Way, 
what  is  the  love  that  is  proportioned  to  such 
a  Power,  and  what  may  we  not  expect 
from  it? 


8  OUKSELVES   AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

But  the  most  important  message  of  the 
stars  is  yet  to  be  stated,  and  must  be  put  into 
a  line.  It  is  that  of  the  absolute  spirituality 
of  true  religion.  The  widening  of  the  outer 
heavens  is  the  cosmic  emphasis  upon  the  word 
of  Jesus  :  "  Neither  shall  ye  say,  Lo  here  ! 
or  lo  there  !  for,  behold,  the  Kingdom  of  God 
is  within  you."  Astronomy  puts  the  veto  on 
external  pilgrimings,  as  aids  to  religion.  We 
might  journey  from  here  to  Arcturus  and  be  no 
whit  nearer  God.  The  movement  needed  is 
of  another  kind,  in  another  sphere.  Relig- 
ion's "  above  "  and  "  beneath  "  have  nothing 
to  do  with  location.  They  are  states  of  the 
heart.  To  get  on  here  we  need  not  to  change 
our  place  but  our  ways.  We  reach  heaven  not 
through  the  clouds  but  through  our  own  souls. 
It  comes  into  us,  and  we  come  into  it,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  stages  we  make  in  faith,  in  love, 
in  humility  of  spirit.  As  we  move  along  this 
line  of  things  what  we  are  chiefly  conscious  of 
is  not  so  much  the  roomier  realm  of  the  stars, 
majestic  though  that  be,  as  the  roomier  realm  of 
the  soul.  How  the  two  are  exactly  related  does 
not  yet  appear.  Enough  if  we  realise  that  the 
inconceivable  vastness  of  the  one  stands  over 
against  the  inconceivable  vastness  of  the  other. 


A  BOOMIEE  UNIVERSE. 


Citizens  of  a  boundless  physical  universe,  let  us 
rejoice  most  in  our  fellowship  in  that  spiritual 
kingdom  whose  treasures  an  inspired  voice  has 
thus  described :  "  Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear 
heard,  neither  hath  entered  into  the  heart  of 
man,  the  things  which  God  hath  prepared  for 
them  that  love  Him." 


n. 
The  Divine  Indifference. 

THERE  are  times  in  history  when  a  mortal  chill 
seems  to  fall  upon  the  human  soul.  A  deadly 
suspicion  spreads  abroad  that  man  is,  after  all, 
in  a  universe  that  is  deaf  and  dumb  to  his 
prayer.  The  impression  gains  that  morality 
and  spirituality ;  faith,  hope,  love — all  the 
things  that  make  life  precious  and  holy — are 
phenomena  simply  of  our  own  consciousness, 
and  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  there  being 
anything  corresponding  to  them  outside.  Men 
argue  that  our  moral  code  is  provincial,  that  its 
writ  does  not  run  beyond  given  boundaries.  It 
is  valid  for  certain  spheres  of  human  conduct. 
It  is,  for  instance,  correct  to  say  that  industry 
produces  prosperity,  that  sobriety  and  frugality 
promote  health,  while  dissipation  induces 
disease ;  that  love  and  self-sacrifice  have  what 
seems  an  ennobling  effect  upon  our  sensibilities. 
But  how  far  does  this  carry  as  related  to  the 
immeasurable  realm  outside  ?  Nature  appears 


THE  DIVINE  INDIFFERENCE.  11 

to  know  nothing  of  our  morality.  She  slays 
wholesale,  and  in  her  slaying  takes  no  heed  of 
ethical  distinction.  When  the  ship  goes  down, 
or  the  earthquake  engulfs  the  city,  the  pious 
and  prayerful  are  swept  away  just  as  remorse- 
lessly as  the  murderer  and  the  thief.  People 
living  sheltered  lives  may  dream  of  love  as  at  the 
heart  of  things ;  but  the  man  on  a  raft  in  the 
pitiless  Atlantic,  or  staggering,  lost  and  hope- 
less, to  his  death  in  the  Australian  bush,  finds 
no  suggestion  of  this  friendliness. 

There  are  times,  we  say,  when  such  considera- 
tions come  upon  men  with  crushing  force.  The 
earthquake  at  Lisbon,  it  is  said,  made  multi- 
tudes of  people  atheists.  It  is  strange,  by  the 
way,  to  remember  that  the  call  to  faith  in  view 
of  that  catastrophe  was  given  in  Europe  by  no 
other  than  Voltaire,  who  wrote  a  poem  coun- 
selling silent  and  trustful  resignation  in  face  of 
an  inscrutable  Providence.  In  events  of  this 
kind  Nature  seems  to  outrage  our  best  in- 
stincts. We  should  not  wonder  if  the  survivors 
of  the  tidal  wave  at  Galveston  found  their 
faith  as  well  as  their  property  submerged. 
At  such  times  men  echo  Carlyle's  outburst, 
"  God  sits  in  heaven  and  does  nothing ! " 
And  history  often  staggers  us  as  much  as 


12          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEKSE. 

Nature.  We  picture  to  ourselves  what  happens 
in  a  single  twenty-four  hours  on  this  planet — 
hideous  massacres  in  China,  the  kidnapping  of 
slaves  in  Central  Africa,  the  brutal  orgies 
repeated  every  night  in  the  great  cities,  with 
their  engulfments  of  virtue,  their  defiance  of 
God ;  these  things  happen,  and  there  seems  no 
outside  response,  no  faintest  sign  that  any 
moral  sensitiveness  beyond  our  own  has  thereby 
been  touched. 

Brooding  of  this  kind  is  very  rife  to-day,  and 
it  has  produced  the  singular  result  of  a  re- 
ligious scepticism  that  has  morality  for  its 
chief  support.  Man  has  become  conscientious, 
but  cannot  find  a  conscience  in  the  universe. 
He  thinks  himself  better  than  his  world,  and  is 
ready  to  propose  an  evangelistic  mission 
amongst  the  unseen  powers.  The  modern 
mind  shows  us  in  every  direction  the  bewilder- 
ment into  which  it  has  fallen.  It  serves  us  up 
afresh  the  denials  of  Lucretius,  and  the  despair 
of  Omar  Khayyam.  It  repeats  Heine's  scoff 
at  the  world  as  "an  age-long  riddle  which 
only  fools  expect  to  solve.*'  It  lowers  its 
conception  of  God  to  the  "  Fortuna  omnipotens 
et  ineluctabile  fatum "  of  Virgil,  or  declares 
with  the  messenger  in  the  Antigone  that  "  it  is 


THE   DIVINE   INDIFFERENCE.  13 

but  chance  that  raiseth  up,  and  chance  that 
bringeth  low,  .  .  .  and  none  foretells  a 
man's  appointed  lot."  The  heavens  offer  to  it 
the  griin  spectacle  of 

Innumerable,  pitiless,  passionless  eyes, 
Cold  fires,  yet  with  power  to  burn  and  brand 
His  nothingness  into  man. 

A  Nietsche  treats  man  as  a  mere  passing 
phase  of  existence,  a  Watson  as  Nature's 
chance  child: 

Through  untold  seons  vast 

She  let  him  lurk  and  cower  ; 
'Twould  seem  he  climbed  at  last 

In  mere  fortuitous  hour, 

Child  of  a  thousand  chances  'neath  the  indifferent 
sky. 

And  yet  in  all  this  the  chief  puzzle  to  us 
lies  not  in  the  world-problems  that  are  pre- 
sented, but  in  the  fact  that  men  in  such 
numbers,  and  often  of  such  conspicuous  ability, 
should  so  misconceive  the  whole  question. 
For,  when  everything  is  said,  what  does  this 
supposed  evidence  about  "  the  Divine  indiffer- 
ence "  amount  to?  Looked  at  narrowly,  it 
resolves  itself  into  a  series  of  surface  appear- 
ances of  really  no  weight  as  against  the  other 
side.  We  will  not  linger  here  in  the  region  of 


14          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  too  obvious,  otherwise  we  might  point  out 
that  to  grumble  because  the  good  man  as  well 
as  the  evil  perishes  in  a  shipwreck  or  falls  from 
a  precipice  is  to  impeach  one  of  our  best 
friends  and  safeguards.  The  unvarying  action 
of  the  laws  of  Nature  may  drown  a  man  here 
and  there,  or  break  him  in  pieces  at  the  bottom 
of  a  cliff,  but  what  kind  of  a  world  should  we 
have  if  this  uniformity  ceased,  and  gravitation 
pulled  up  or  down  at  any  man's  whim  or  need  ? 
Our  navigation,  our  building,  our  engineering, 
the  whole  of  our  mechanical  arts,  the  whole 
progress  of  the  sciences ;  more  than  that,  the 
whole  education  of  the  mind,  its  forethought, 
its  calculation,  its  coolness,  its  courage,  depend 
upon  the  faith  we  have  in  Nature's  guarantee 
that  she  will  keep  to  her  course  and  not 
deviate  at  random  from  her  established  line  of 
things. 

But  what  of  those  who  get  the  rough  side  of 
this  uniformity,  whom  it  buffets  or  crushes? 
Why  is  Nature  in  places  so  horribly  fierce,  so 
utterly  cruel  ?  As  a  rule  the  men  who  know 
most  of  that  fierceness,  the  mariners  buffeted 
in  Bay  of  Biscay  gales,  the  explorers  of 
Antarctic  wastes,  are  just  the  people  who  do 
not  complain.  Roughness  is  one  thing  to  a 


THE   DIVINE   INDIFFERENCE.  15 


nincompoop,  another  thing  to  a  man.  "What/' 
such  men  are  inclined  to  say,  "  would  you  have 
us  cockered  up  and  kept  all  our  days  in  cotton- 
wool ?  God  thinks  too  well  of  us  to  leave  us  to 
such  a  fate."  Nature's  wild  and  remorseless 
energy  is  the  field  on  which  they  reach  their 
strength.  And  when  things  have  come  to  the 
worst,  and  some  disaster  which  no  courage  or 
skill  can  avert  crashes  down  and  leaves  ruin 
behind,  can  we  argue  as  though  the  world's 
moral  laws  have  here  been  defied  or  annulled  ? 
If  we  will  only  look  below  the  surface  we  shall 
see  that  it  is  precisely  here,  on  the  contrary, 
they  get  their  most  decisive  vindication.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  "  one  event  happening  to 
all."  Each  man's  event  happens  according  to 
what  he  is  and  not  otherwise.  The  shipwreck 
which  carries  fifty  men  to  the  bottom  varies  in 
its  aspect  to  every  one  of  them  by  the  whole 
range  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  constitution. 
When  the  three  were  crucified  at  Golgotha 
there  was,  to  the  outer  eye,  no  difference  in 
the  foitune  of  the  sufferers.  The  indifferent 
soldiers  performed  their  functions,  and  indif- 
ferent Nature  performed  hers.  There  were 
equally  for  all  crosses,  nails,  tortures,  thirsts, 
death.  And  yet  this  one  event  to  the  three 


16          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

who  suffered  it  stood  separate  as  to  its 
personal  significances  by  the  whole  diameter  of 
the  universe.  Even  that  old  pagan  Montaigne 
had  the  grace  given  him  to  see  this,  and 
remarks  somewhere  that  "  external  occasions 
take  both  flavour  and  colour  from  the  internal 
constitution."  Whatever  happens  in  the 
region  of  men's  physical  and  material  fates, 
not  a  hair's  breadth  of  deviation  shows  in  the 
operation  there  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  laws. 
But  what  to  the  modern  conscience  is, 
perhaps,  the  greatest  stumbling-block  of  all 
remains  yet  to  be  dealt  with.  This  lies  in  what 
seems  "  the  Divine  indifference "  to  man's 
moral  and  religious  aspirations.  Earnest  men 
watch  with  dismay  the  immoralities  around 
them,  the  orgies  of  lust  and  crime,  the  pros- 
perity of  villains,  the  grinding  of  the  poor,  and 
in  their  struggle  against  it  they  seem  to  get  no 
help.  They  read  of  earlier  revelations  and 
interpositions,  but  the  events  of  to-day  appear 
to  carry  "no  revelation  except  that  nobody 
cares."  At  times  the  dumb  silence  of  that 
outside  universe  to  which  we  turn  our  eyes 
seems  almost  maddening.  But  here  again  we 
are  out  of  our  reckoning  simply  because  our 
observations  are  faulty.  There  is  nothing 


THE   DIVINE   INDIFFERENCE.  17 

wrong  with  the  heavens ;  it  is  our  sextant  and 
compass  that  need  adjustment.  For  how  do 
we  expect  God  to  interfere  in  the  world's  moral 
history  ?  Shall  He  visit  the  wicked  with  fiery 
cataclysms  ?  That  would  be  history  in  the 
sphere  of  phenomena  and  sensation,  but  it 
would  in  no  sense  be  moral  history.  If  we  will 
only  look  deep  enough  we  may  see  that  God, 
conceived  as  moral  and  spiritual,  is  acting 
precisely  in  the  way  we  should  expect.  So  far 
from  being  indifferent,  He  offers  an  ever-grow- 
ing revelation  of  His  moral  care.  His  universe 
is  not  silent  on  this  point.  The  mistake  men 
make  is  in  looking  for  speech  in  the  wrong 
direction.  Schelling  long  ago  indicated  the 
law  of  the  Divine  working  here  in  the  aphorism, 
"  Only  the  personal  can  help  the  personal,  and 
God  must  become  man  in  order  that  man  may 
come  again  to  God."  His  entire  approach  to 
us  is  by  immanence  and  incarnation.  The 
developing  sentiment  of  the  moral  community, 
the  sentiment  which  protests  against  injustice 
and  works  for  a  better  order,  is  simply  His 
voice  in  the  world.  He  speaks  to  man  through 
man  and  no  other  way.  Our  very  impatience 
with  the  oppositions  and  the  slow  progress  is 
but  the  rush  of  the  stream  of  His  life  in  the 


18          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

too  narrow  channels  of  our  limited  nature 
The  revolt  of  our  conscience  against  the  low 
moral  order  is  His  battle-cry  for  a  better  one. 

To  sum  up.  "  The  Divine  Indifference  "  is 
apparent,  and  not  real.  The  universe,  despite 
surface  appearances  to  the  contrary,  discloses  a 
Divine  moral  order  and  a  Divine  moral  passion, 
the  revelation  of  which  is  in  the  human  con- 
sciousness. God  can  only  make  Himself  known 
morally  in  the  sphere  of  the  soul,  and  there  He 
does  make  Himself  known.  Any  man  to-day, 
if  he  chooses,  can  have  the  consciousness  of 
God  in  his  own  spirit.  In  view  of  this  it  is 
well  for  us  "  to  bear  without  resentment  the 
Divine  reserve."  With  a  modern  French 
writer  we  realise  that  "  the  sincere  acceptance 
of  the  inevitable  supposes  a  love  for  the  inevit- 
able, the  consciousness  that  this  obscure  universe 
has  a  mysterious  and  kindly  significance."  We 
go  farther.  Those  who  penetrate  to  its  centre 
find  there  clear  sky  and  angels'  food.  To  him 
that  overcometh  is  given  to  eat  of  the  hidden 
manna. 


III. 
Truth's   Spiritual    Equivalents. 

THE  debt  of  theology  to  science  is,  perhaps, 
nowhere  more  strikingly  illustrated  than  in  the 
light  which  modern  discovery  in  the  latter  field 
is  shedding  upon  some  of  the  most  difficult 
problems  of  religious  thought.  One  of  the 
brightest  rays  of  this  new  illumination  is  that 
which  streams  from  the  scientific  law  of  the 
transmutation  and  equivalence  of  energy.  The 
fact,  now  so  familiar  to  us,  that  force  is  con- 
stant ;  that  it  is  capable  of  infinite  transforma- 
tion while  remaining  the  same  in  quantity ; 
that  so  much  motion  can  be  turned  into  so 
much  heat,  or  light  or  electricity,  and  back 
again  through  all  the  series,  without  the  loss 
of  a  fraction  of  it — irresistibly  raises  the  ques- 
tion whether  a  similar  law  may  not  be  discerned 
in  other  spheres.  We  propose  here  t*  follow 
out  this  suggestion  in  one  particular  direction, 
and  to  ask  whether  evidence  does  not  exist 
of  a  law  of  equivalency  between  moral  or 


20          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

spiritual  feeling  and  intellectual  truth.  Can  it 
be  said  that  a  given  moral  emotion  argues 
always  the  presence  somewhere  of  a  corre- 
sponding truth  for  the  intellect?  Is  what  is 
noblest  in  the  moral  life  truest  as  a  fact  ?  Can 
what  the  soul  realises  as  the  highest  in  its 
inner  feeling  be  taken  as  a  proof  of  an  objective 
reality  that  the  reason  may  recognise?  Before 
we  have  done  we  shall  hope  to  show  that  the 
topic  is  a  practical  one,  and  that  the  applica- 
tions of  it  are  of  the  first  importance. 

We  need  not  stop  here  to  investigate  the 
precise  philosophical  relations  between  thought 
and  feeling,  nor  to  inquire  to  what  extent,  in  a 
given  mental  state,  feeling  is  amalgamated 
with  thought.  It  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose 
to  go  upon  the  distinction,  broadly  marked  in 
every  man's  consciousness,  between  his  reason 
and  his  emotions.  To  indicate  precisely  what 
we  are  inquiring  after,  let  us  take  a  concrete 
illustration.  The  first  appeal  to  a  man  of  a 
volcano  in  eruption  would  be  to  his  feeling. 
After  the  initial  act  of  perception  what  he 
would  be  immediately  conscious  of  would  be 
sensations  of  wonder,  admiration,  awe,  perhaps 
terror.  But  if  he  were  a  scientific  man,  there 
would  be  a  supervening  play  of  faculties  upon 


TRUTH'S  SPIRITUAL  EQUIVALENTS.        21 

this  spectacle  of  a  totally  different  order.  He 
would  find  himself  speculating  about  the  causes 
of  the  phenomenon.  What  has  happened  to 
his  emotions  has  suggested  a  problem  to  his 
intellect.  Now  the  point  we  wish  here  to  bring 
out  is  that  his  investigation  would  proceed 
upon  the  supposition  that  the  feeling  just  raised 
in  him  had  somewhere  a  full  objective  equiva- 
lent; that  the  awe,  wonder,  terror,  in  the 
sphere  of  his  emotions  were  a  correct,  though 
as  yet  undeciphered,  register  of  outside  causes 
and  forces  which  it  was  for  his  intellect  to 
interpret. 

We  can  proceed  now  immediately  to  the 
application  of  this  to  the  problems  of  religion, 
and  especially  of  New  Testament  religion.  The 
religious  appeal,  both  to  the  race  and  to  the 
individual,  is  first  of  all  to  the  emotions.  The 
cry  of  Faust,  "  Gefuhl  ist  alles,"  is  a  strained 
expression  of  the  fundamental  truth  on  which 
Schleiermacher  built,  that  the  heart,  the  moral 
consciousness,  is  the  true  theologian.  We  turn 
the  pages  of  the  Gospels  and  the  Epistles  to 
find — what?  Not  an  argument,  a  definite 
appeal  to  the  intellect,  but  an  exhibition  of 
emotions  and  of  acts  consequent  upon  emotions. 
Like  our  traveller  in  presence  of  the  volcanic 


22  OtfKSELVES   AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

eruption,  the  first  Christians,  we  find,  are  full 
of  an  immense  complex  of  feeling  to  which  they 
are  here  trying  to  give  expression.  The 
traveller's  phenomenon  is  the  volcano  ;  their 
phenomenon  is  Christ.  The  traveller,  as  a 
scientific  man,  is  convinced  that  the  immense 
impression  on  his  senses  has  an  exact  equivalent 
behind  it  of  objective  fact.  And  the  question 
of  questions  for  us  to-day  is  whether  we  are  not 
entitled  to  apply  this  same  law  to  the  impression 
made  on  the  first  disciples  by  the  Master  of 
whom  they  write. 

Let  it  here  be  observed  that  the  force  of  this 
consideration  is  in  no  way  lessened  by  the 
criticism  that  the  language  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  describes  these  impressions  may 
possibly  be  inexact  or  hyperbolical.  We  may 
accept  it  as  perfectly  true  that  the  titles  given 
there  to  Christ,  such  as  the  Son  of  God,  the 
Logos,  the  Messiah,  were  not  coined  by  the 
writers,  but  were  already  familiar  to  the  Jewish 
Messianic  theology.  When  all  this  is  granted 
we  have  still  this  position  remaining  and  to  be 
accounted  for,  that  the  life,  words,  and  works 
of  Christ  had  produced  in  His  followers  an 
emotional  and  moral  condition — an  awe,  a 
wonder,  a  love,  a  sense  of  holiness,  a  hatred 


TRUTH'S  SPIRITUAL  EQUIVALENTS.        23 

of  sin,  a  consciousness  in  them  of  spirit- 
ually renovating  power  such  as  had  never 
before  been  reached  in  the  human  soul.  The 
question  is,  What  were  the  dimensions  of  the 
objective  fact  capable  of  producing  this  inner 
effect  ?  Science  demands  that  for  every  result 
there  must  be  an  adequate  cause.  What  was 
the  cause  adequate  to  this  effect  ?  In  this 
conjunction  it  is  really  ludicrous  to  observe  the 
attempts  of  the  Comtists  to  make  Paul  the 
effective  author  of  Christianity.  To  exalt  Paul, 
and  in  the  same  breath  to  nullify  his  one  life 
testimony  is  surely  a  strange  procedure.  To 
the  really  scientific  student  of  Paul's  utter- 
ances, of  those  ever-repeated  asseverances  that 
Christ  is  everything  and  himself  nothing ;  that 
his  whole  inner  life,  so  far  as  it  is  good,  is  a 
derivation  from  Christ — the  one  question  is, 
What  or  who  was  He  who  could  produce  such 
an  impression  upon  such  a  mind  ? 

The  argument  which  looms  out  of  all  this  is 
immensely  strengthened  when  we  remember 
that  these  inward  impressions  are  not  an  affair 
of  testimony  merely,  but  have  been  a  matter  of 
continuous  experience  in  human  history  ever 
since.  The  inward  thrill  which  Paul  and  John 
felt  at  the  presence  of  Christ,  and  which  they 


24  OuilSELVES    AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

tried  to  translate  into  words,  has  been  felt  ever 
since,  and  is  felt  to-day.  Into  the  histories  of 
Christ,  as  we  have  them,  we  may  have  to  admit 
that  something  legendary  has  crept.  But  in 
the  love  and  joy  which  He  made  to  spring  up 
in  human  hearts,  the  sense  of  forgiveness,  of 
sonship,  of  inward  sanctifying,  there  was 
nothing  legendary.  There  is  nothing  legendary 
either  about  the  same  experiences  which  fill 
the  souls  of  men  to-day  wherever  He  is  preached 
and  accepted.  But  what  is  the  intellectual 
equivalent  of  such  a  feeling  as  this  ?  Theology 
has  through  all  the  ages  been  trying  to  find  it 
for  us,  and  has  not  succeeded  any  too  well.  But 
whatever  the  formula  we  accept  as  to  the  Per- 
son of  Christ,  this  at  least  the  scientific  as  well 
as  the  Christian  consciousness  demands,  that  it 
shall  not  be  lower  than  the  effect.  The 
apostles  and  first  witnesses  felt  that  their  soul 
had  been  in  contact  with  God,  and  they  said  so. 
The  living  Church,  though  it  may  vary  its 
phraseology,  repeats  the  affirmation.  As  Her- 
mann puts  it :  "  None  of  us  can  come  as  a 
witness  to  the  virgin  birth  ;  one  can  only  report 
it.  But  that  the  spiritual  life  of  Jesus  has  not 
proceeded  from  the  sinful  race,  but  that  in  Him 
God  Himself  has  stepped  into  the  history  of 


TRUTH'S  SPIRITUAL  EQUIVALENTS.        25 

the  race,  of  that  we  can  be  witnesses,  for  this 
knowledge  forms  a  part  of  that  which  we  our- 
selves have  experienced." 

The  value  of  this  line  of  argument  to  the 
central  positions  of  Christianity  will,  perhaps, 
not  be  immediately  patent  to  us  all.  But  in 
the  days  of  theological  storm  and  stress  that 
are  coming,  when  the  tempest  of  New  Testa- 
ment criticism  which  already  in  Germany  has 
wrought  such  havoc  upon  earlier  conceptions 
has  made  its  force  fully  felt  in  England,  it  will 
be  realised  that  here  is  faith's  central  and  im- 
pregnable defence. 

And  the  suggestion  we  have  here  been 
following,  that  the  morally  highest  has  its 
equivalent  in  the  intellectually  truest,  and 
vice  versa,  will  be  found  to  apply  with  excellent 
results  in  other  of  the  problems  of  religion  and 
life.  It  may,  for  instance,  be  safely  taken  for 
granted  that  whatever  contradicts  the  soul's 
highest  moral  witness  is  thereby  proved  intel- 
lectually false.  When,  for  example,  the  last 
century  listened  to  the  scornful  criticisms  of 
Diderot,  Condorcet,  and  the  other  encyclo- 
paedists on  Christianity  as  "  most  absurd  and 
atrocious  in  its  dogmas,  most  insipid,  most 
gloomy,  most  Gothic,  most  puerile,  most  un- 


26          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

sociable  in  its  morals,"  and  so  on,  the  inward 
sense  of  untutored  Christians  knew  them 
wrong,  though  it  took  another  century  for 
the  critically  educated  intellect  to  discover 
precisely  where  the  error  lay.  And  conversely, 
when  from  the  supposedly  orthodox  side  doc- 
trines are  presented  to  us  as  Christian  which 
the  moral  consciousness  revolts  against,  we 
may  rest  assured  that,  however  venerable  the 
authority  against  which  it  reacts,  the  verdict 
of  feeling  here  will  turn  out  to  have  its  full 
equivalent  in  the  ultimate  presentment  of 
the  reason.  When  the  Puritan  Cartwright, 
offering  what  he  supposes  is  Scriptural  con- 
firmation of  religious  persecution,  exclaims, 
"  If  this  be  regarded  as  extreame  and  bloodie 
I  am  glad  to  be  so  with  the  Holy  Ghost,"  we 
know  he  is  wrong  long  before  we  discover  the 
arguments  that  prove  it.  But  the  feeling  and 
the  arguments  tally  in  the  end.  In  general  it 
may  be  stated  that  whatever  in  the  way  of 
teaching  detracts  from  reverence,  from  love, 
from  self-sacrifice,  on  the  one  side,  and  on  the 
other  limits  liberty  and  deadens  the  instinct  for 
truth,  is  thereby,  without  further  evidence,  cer- 
tified by  the  soul  as  false.  The  moral  criterion 
is  linked  indissolubly  with  the  intellectual  one. 


TRUTH'S  SPIRITUAL  EQUIVALENTS.        27 

From  the  foregoing  exposition  a  number  of 
results  follow  which  we  can  here  only  in  the 
briefest  way  indicate.  One  is  that  the  Church 
which  fails  to  produce  the  highest  inward 
states  is  proved  thereby  defective  in  its 
teaching.  Conversely,  the  higher  spiritual 
conditions,  wherever  we  find  them,  are  the 
surest  of  all  religious  evidences.  The  inward 
life  of  a  saint  points  as  certainly  to  an  actually 
existent  spiritual  world  as  the  colouring  of  a 
flower  to  the  existence  and  potencies  of  light. 
When,  however,  we  say  that  the  highest  life 
can  only  be  nourished  on  the  highest  truth  it 
is  not  meant  that  the  form  in  which  the  truth 
is  held  is  always  necessarily  the  best.  Some  of 
the  noblest  lives  we  have  known  have  been 
nourished  on  doctrines  many  of  which,  in  the 
form  they  were  held,  we  should  reject.  But 
the  very  fact  that  a  doctrine  has  helped  to 
nourish  a  holy  character  is,  if  our  analysis  is 
correct,  proof  that,  however  defective  its  form 
or  expression,  its  substance  is  true.  Whatever 
has  helped  to  make  men  better  is  always  intel- 
lectually as  well  as  morally  verifiable.  It  was 
precisely  this  argument,  from  the  moral  to  the 
intellectual,  that  in  the  second  century  turned 
Justin  Martyr  from  a  pagan  into  a  Christian, 


28         OURSELVES   AND   THE   UNIVEESE, 

and  that,  in  the  nineteenth,  brought  Tolstoi 
from  sceptical  pessimism  to  the  optimism  of 
faith.  The  pagan  philosopher  tells  us  how, 
studying  the  lives  of  the  early  Christians,  he 
realised  that  such  moral  effects  must  have  fact 
and  truth  for  the  cause,  and  the  Eussian  has 
testified  that  when  "  I  saw  around  me  people 
who,  having  this  faith,  derived  from  it  an  idea 
of  life  that  gave  them  strength  to  live  and 
strength  to  die  in  peace  and  in  joy,"  the  moral 
logic  of  the  spectacle  subdued  him. 

The  Church  need  never  worry  itself  about 
giving  a  complete  intellectual  expression  to  the 
life  that  is  in  it.  For  what  is  the  meaning  of 
the  breakdowns  of  its  past  theologies?  Is  it 
not  simply  that  the  truth  hidden  behind  its 
life  is  something  vaster  than  any  of  its  mental 
forms  can  contain  ? 


IV. 
The    Inwardness    of    Events. 

OURS  is  the  age  of  scientific  analysis,  and  it 
might  seem  at  first  sight  as  though  the  whole 
of  life  had  come  under  its  swaj.  While  our 
chemistry  resolves  every  substance  into  its 
elements,  our  psychology  proposes  to  unravel 
every  complex  of  the  consciousness.  We  put 
both  our  outer  and  our  inner  world  into  the 
crucible,  and  are  ready  with  an  approved  book 
formula  for  each.  There  is,  however,  one  life 
element  left  out  of  this  calculation.  It  is  that 
of  events  and  of  what  they  contain.  Our 
science  of  events  is  as  yet  that  of  the  veriest 
tyro.  It  is  this  fact  which  makes  so  much  of 
what  is  called  history  veritably  ludicrous  when 
regarded  as  a  statement  of  what  actually  is,  or 
has  been.  Tor  our  historian,  in  numberless 
instances,  offers  us  the  mere  surface  and  ragged 
edges  of  a  happening,  as  though  this  were  the 
whole  of  it.  A  Froissart  pictures  one  battle 
scene  after  another,  or  a  Guicciardini  describes 


30         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  intrigues  and  wars  of  the  Italian  states 
"without,"  as  Montaigne  remarks,  "ever 
referring  any  action  to  virtue,  religion  or  con- 
science," and  they  imagine  that  here  they 
have  told  us  all.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
have  told  us  almost  nothing.  It  is  only  when 
we  begin  to  realise  that  every  event,  in  addition 
to  its  outer  form,  has  an  inward  life  of  its  own, 
mystical,  infinitely  complex,  whose  full  develop- 
ment may  take  centuries  and  millenniums  to 
unfold,  that  we  are  in  a  position  to  study  it 
aright. 

It  is,  indeed,  when  we  properly  consider 
events  and  their  inner  significance  that  we  are 
most  stirred  with  a  sense  of  life's  wonder  and 
mystery.  The  event  is  our  predestination. 
Men  propose  at  times  to  construct  their  career 
from  within,  as  when  a  Jerome  flies  to  his  cell 
in  the  desert,  or  a  Descartes,  in  search  of  a 
philosophy,  passes  three  years  in  his  chamber 
without  seeing  a  single  friend,  or  so  much  as 
going  out  for  a  walk.  But  wherever  made,  the 
attempt  is  impossible.  The  recluse,  as  well  as 
the  man  of  action,  has  to  reckon  with  the  in- 
calculable that  waits  for  him  outside.  These 
innumerable  fates  that  are  in  the  path  of  every 
human  being,  what  is  their  meaning?  They 


THE   IXWARDNESS   OP   EVENTS.  81 

bide  their  hour  till  the  wayfarer  they  are  in 
search  of  appears,  and  then  leap  to  meet  him. 
They  know  him  by  sight  when  he  comes.  It  is 
for  him  they  are  waiting.  From  all  eternity 
that  event  has  been  travelling  to  meet  me  at 
this  particular  point  and  to  deliver  its  message. 
Its  shock  of  contact  becomes  immediately  a 
part  of  my  deepest  life,  for  it  is  the  something 
outside  myself  that  produces  what  it  were 
impossible  for  the  unaided  spirit  to  originate. 
It  and  I  were  assuredly  wedded  in  heaven 
before  the  world  was. 

It  is  a  great  step  in  the  interpretation  of  life 
when  we  have  discovered  that  all  events  are 
ultimately  spiritual.  Their  outside  may  seem 
at  the  furthest  remove  from  any  such  character, 
but  we  have  only  to  go  deep  enough  to  find  that 
this  is  the  simple  truth  about  them.  The  fall 
of  Jerusalem  was  to  Jeremiah  and  his  contem- 
poraries just  a  bloody  and  horrible  catastrophe. 
AVithin  it  was  contained  the  movement  which 
led  up  to  the  revelation  of  God  as  henceforth  not 
the  tribal  deity  of  Judah,  but  the  one  God  and 
Creator  of  all  nations  of  the  earth.  The  split 
in  the  Papacy,  which  gave  fourteenth  century 
Christendom  two  rival  and  mutually  anathema- 
tising Popes,  was,  to  innumerable  devout 


32         OURSELVES  AND   THE  UNIVERSE. 

Catholics,  only  a  distressing  quarrel  and  a 
grievous  religious  scandal.  At  its  centre  the 
spectacle  held  the  germ  of  that  appeal  of  the 
Christian  consciousness  from  fallible  and  rival 
ecclesiastics  to  Christ  Himself,  which  issued  in 
the  Reformation.  When  shall  we  ever  reach 
the  central  inwardness  of  the  event  we  call  the 
Crucifixion  ?  In  itself,  on  the  outside,  it  was  a 
sheer,  grim  fact,  a  hideous  killing.  It  was  not 
speech,  nor  music,  nor  poetry,  nor  art,  nor 
philosophy,  nor  saving  power.  It  was  the  doing 
to  death  of  a  victim  in  the  cruel  Roman  fashion. 
And  yet,  as  we  press  toward  the  inner  recesses 
of  this  fact,  how  much  do  we  meet  of  art  and 
philosophy  and  devotion  and  saving  power,  and 
all  Divine  things  that  have  already  come  out  of 
it,  and  how  much  more,  unreached  as  yet, 
remains  behind  ? 

This  conception  of  events,  as  all  containing  a 
spiritual  essence,  which  they  will  ultimately 
yield,  should  ever  be  with  us  in  our  estimate  of 
the  world's  religious  prospects.  It  is  a 
ludicrous  misconception  which  regards  man's 
inward  progress  as  dependent  exclusively  on 
the  avowed  and  professional  religious  agencies. 
Guthenberg  wore  no  cassock  when  puzzling 
over  his  printing-press,  and  George  Stephenson, 


TUB  INWARDNESS  OF  EVENTS.  33 

in  elaborating  the  idea  of  the  locomotive,  was 
conscious  of  no  specially  theological  inspiration. 
Yet  for  their  after  influence  in  the  develop- 
ment of  religion  what  purely  ecclesiastical 
procedure  could  we  match  against  the  invention 
of  printing  and  of  the  steam-engine?  An 
Egyptian  excavator,  stumbling  some  fine 
morning  upon  a  Greek  manuscript,  say  an 
Ur-evangelium  of  the  first  century,  might  upset 
for  ever  thereby  the  theological  doubtings  of  a 
thousand  years.  Plainly  the  pulpit  is  not  the 
only  religious  teacher.  The  roughest,  rudest 
block  of  fact  that  lies  across  our  path,  giving 
no  hint  at  first  of  aught  in  itself  but  what  is 
purely  material,  may  suddenly  open,  and  from 
its  store  of  hidden  contents  pour  out  un- 
dreamed-of spiritual  treasures.  Our  study  of 
missions,  to  be  complete,  must  take  a  far  wider 
scope  than  is  usual.  It  must  not  end  with 
biographies.  Events  are  evangelists  of  the 
first  order. 

There  is  this  advantage  about  events  con- 
sidered as  teachers,  that  they  are  so  entirely 
honest  and  trustworthy.  Unlike  so  many  of 
our  religious  instructors,  they  carry  no  top 
hamper  of  tradition,  and  they  never  worry  us 
with  preconceived  theories.  They  neither  lie 

3 


84          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

nor  flatter,  but  bring  us  a  lesson  crammed  with 
reality,  and  bid  us  make  what  we  can  of  it. 
And  yet  here  is  the  mystery.  Out  of  what 
outwardly  is  the  same  thing  none  of  us  gets  the 
same  result.  None  of  us  will  find  this  same 
thing  to  be  the  same.  And  for  the  reason  that 
what  it  teaches  is  precisely  according  to  what 
we  are  able  to  learn.  Events  yield  their 
essence  in  proportion  to  the  quality  and  char- 
acter of  the  being  in  contact  with  them.  They 
are  thus,  in  a  sense,  the  looking-glass  in 
which  we  behold  ourselves.  "If  you  journey 
to  the  end  of  the  world,"  says  a  modern  mystic, 
"none  but  yourself  shall  you  meet  on  the 
highway  of  fate." 

When  we  consider  the  inconceivable  numbers 
of  events  that  sweep  across  our  life  pathway, 
their  bewildering  variety,  their  unexpectedness, 
their  often  sinister  and  even  terrible  aspect,  we 
might  easily  be  led  to  think  that  on  their  side,  at 
least,  we  were  in  a  world  of  chance,  where  was 
no  complete  or  benign  supervision.  Events  seem 
so  often  to  be  destroyers  rather  than  teachers. 
A  deeper  study  of  them  should  reassure  us. 
For  it  will  show  that  in  their  seeming  wildest 
aberrations  they  are  subject  to  a  spiritual  law, 
the  same  which  rules  in  our  own  breasts.  It 


THE  INWARDNESS  OP  EVENTS.  35 

is,  indeed,  bj  their  constant  attrition  upon  our 
life  that  the  letters  of  this  law  are  rubbed  into 
distinctness.  It  is  profoundly  interesting  to 
observe  at  how  early  a  period  the  world  gained 
a  perception  of  this.  The  ancient  doctrine  of 
fate  was  a  much  higher  one  than  we  are  apt  to 
imagine.  In  the  teaching  of  Heraclitus,  and 
also  of  Plato,  that  fate  was  the  general  reason 
which  runs  through  the  whole  nature  of  the 
universe,  and  in  that  of  Chrysippus,  who  speaks 
of  fate  as  a  spiritual  power  which  disposed 
the  world  in  order,  we  have  an  idea,  however 
imperfect,  of  the  Divine  purpose  that  is  em- 
bedded in  events.  A  clearer  revelation  has 
assured  us  that  their  source  and  eal  are  the 
same  as  the  source  and  end  of  i.he  highest 
aspirations  of  the  soul. 

To  discover  and  be  firmly  co.i.inced  of  this 
higher  law  underlying  events  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  result  of  the  education  through  which 
they  put  us.  To  be  quite  assured  that  the 
event,  however  grisly  its  shape,  can  never  hurt 
you  provided  you  are  faithful  to  the  spiritual 
law ;  that,  with  this  condition  observed,  it  will, 
in  fact,  infallibly  lift  you  a  point  higher  in  the 
scale  of  life,  is  practically  the  winning  of  the 
battle.  This  is  where  that  stout  New  England 


36          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Puritan  stood  who,  on  a  certain  "  Dark  Day," 
when  it  was  supposed  that  the  end  of  the  world 
had  come,  and  the  assembly  of  which  he  was  a 
member  was  about  to  be  adjourned,  quietly 
observed  :  "  If  this  be  the  Day  of  Judgment  I 
prefer  to  be  found  at  the  post  of  duty ;  if  it  be 
not,  there  is  no  reason  for  an  adjournment." 
And  what  a  testimony  on  this  point  is  that 
word  of  the  dying  Scaliger,  given  as  the  fruit 
of  his  life  experience,  to  his  disciple  Heinsius : 
"  Never  do  aught  against  thy  inward  conviction 
for  the  sake  of  advancement.  Whatsoever  is 
in  thee  is  God's  alone.** 

How  intimately  related  the  world  of  events  is 
to  the  world  of  spiritual  law  is,  perhaps,  even 
Btill  more  vividly  exhibited  in  the  happenings 
to  those  who  neglect  or  defy  that  law.  It  is 
impossible  here  to  mistake  the  religious  char- 
acter of  events.  They  become  moral  avengers. 
Schiller's  dictum  that  "the  world's  history  is 
the  world's  judgment,"  is  a  simple  statement 
of  the  fact.  "  The  deed,"  says  the  Indian  pro- 
verb, "  does  not  perish."  Where  it  is  an  ill 
deed  it  lives  to  track  down  the  evil-doer. 
Eugene  Aram  murders  Daniel  Clark,  and  buries 
the  crime  under  fourteen  following  years  of 
intellectual  activity.  He  becomes  famous  as  a 


THE  INWARDNESS  OP  EVENTS.  37 

philologist,  making  his  name  known  as  the  dis- 
coverer of  a  European  affinity  in  Celtic  roots. 
But  his  deed,  deep  buried,  is  not  dead.  It 
awakes  and  delivers  its  blow,  and  our  philologist 
gets  hanged  as  a  murderer.  Innumerable  mur- 
derers have  escaped  hanging,  but  they  can  no 
more  get  away  from  their  deed  and  its  full 
results  than  the  earth  can  get  away  from  the 
sun. 

The  greatest  evidence,  perhaps,  of  the 
grandeur  and  infinite  reach  of  the  human 
destinies  lies  in  this  conscious  exposure  of  the 
soul  to  the  momentous  events  that  await  it. 
And  especially  those  darker  events  which  cast 
so  chill  a  shadow  before  them.  It  may  be  that, 
as  Livy  says,  "  Segnius  homines  bona  quam  mala 
sentiuni  "  :  men  have  a  keener  sense  of  ill  than 
of  good.  But  what  they  feel  so  keenly  as  ill 
bears  in  itself  a  message  that  it  is  not  the  end. 
That  deep  word  of  Mrs.  Browning,  "  But  pain 
is  not  the  fruit  of  pain,"  verifies  itself.  No,  not 
pain,  but  something  far  other  shall  be  the  fruit 
of  what  we  here  suffer.  Shall  we  not  say, 
indeed,  with  a  German  writer  of  to-day : 
"  Everything  inferior  is  a  higher  in  the  making ; 
everything  hateful  a  coming  beautiful,  every- 
thing evil  a  coming  good"?  An  inspired 


38  OUESELVES    AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

apostle  has  given  us  the  true  inwardness  of 
events,  in  the  declaration  that  the  present  pain 
shall  be  swallowed  up  in  the  coming  glory,  and 
that  no  one  of  all  the  conceivable  happenings 
in  heaven  or  on  earth  can  separate  the  people 
of  God  from  the  love  of  God. 


V. 
The  Sins  of  Saints. 

THERE  is  a  saying  reported  of  St.  Teresa  that 
"  she  saw  one  good  thing  in  the  world,  namely, 
that  it  would  not  condone  the  faults  of  saints, 
and  that  the  power  of  its  murmurs  made  them 
the  more  perfect."  The  vivacious  Spanish  lady 
was  here  repeating  one  of  the  commonplaces 
of  morals.  She  recounts  the  penalty  which  in 
every  age  visits  those  who  profess  a  higher 
mode  of  living  than  that  of  their  neighbours. 
Their  very  virtues  are  a  danger.  There  is  no 
such  advertisement  for  a  black  spot  as  a  white 
background.  A  reputable  man  may  go  on 
doing  a  thousand  good  things  without  attract- 
ing attention.  Let  him  do  one  bad  thing  and 
the  world  will  ring  with  it.  And  if  the  sins 
are  not  there  they  will  be  invented.  If  we 
judged  the  early  Christians  by  the  accounts  of 
their  enemies  we  should  think  them  a  set  of 
scoundrels.  According  to  these  stories,  they 
were  atheists  and  child  murderers;  their 


40          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

religious  services  were  the  occasion  of  nameless 
debauchery.  Justin  Martyr,  in  a  striking 
passage  tells  how,  in  his  heathen  days,  he  had 
listened  to  these  slanders  against  Christians 
until  an  investigation  of  their  actual  character 
showed  him  "  it  was  impossible  they  could  be 
living  in  wicked  self-indulgence." 

But  the  topic  we  are  discussing  is  by  no 
means  summed  up  in  observations  of  this  kind. 
The  "  sins  of  saints  "  are  not  all  inventions,  nor 
even  exceptions.  There  are  grave  faults  attach- 
ing to  some  forms  of  the  religious  temperament 
against  which  all  who  seek  a  sane  and  whole- 
some way  of  living  need  to  be  on  their  guard. 
We  have  scarcely  yet  waked  to  the  significance 
of  the  fact  that  Christ's  severest  criticisms  were 
directed  against  this  very  type  of  character. 
The  Pharisees  were  the  Puritans  of  their  time. 
Anyone  inquiring  after  the  saints  then  in 
vogue  in  Jewish  society  would  have  been 
directed  to  their  ranks.  The  attitude  of  Jesus 
towards  them,  especially  when  compared  with 
His  attitude  to  less  considered  classes  outside,  is 
a  revelation  on  our  subject  of  the  highest  kind. 
It  shows  us  how  far,  in  the  Supreme  Teacher's 
estimate,  is  any  one  kind  of  temperament,  even 
the  most  religiously  attractive,  from,  represent- 


THE   SINS  OP  SAINTS.  41 

ing  the  wholeness  of  humanity ;  how  easy  it  is 
to  give  to  certain  spiritual  qualities  a  wholly 
false  character  value.  It  was  a  long  experience 
of  .Richard  Baxter,  and  one,  let  us  remember, 
obtained  amongst  the  severest  types  of  religion, 
which  led  him  in  his  old  age  to  say :  "  I  see 
that  good  men  are  not  so  good  as  I  once  thought 
they  were,  and  find  that  few  men  are  as  bad  as 
their  enemies  imagine." 

But  when  we  talk  of  the  sins  of  saints  we 
must  first  of  all  define, — What  are  sins,  and 
what  are  saints  ?  Both  words  represent  a  con- 
tinuous development  of  ethical  standard.  We 
speak  of  the  Old  Testament  "  saints,"  and  the 
word  is,  in  respect  to  them,  not  at  all  a  misnomer. 
Nevertheless,  the  man  in  the  street  of  to-day, 
with  no  pretension  to  sanctity,  would  not  dare 
to  imitate  their  conduct.  Did  he  attempt  it  he 
would  find  himself  in  gaol  within  a  week. 
David  was  a  true  spiritual  leader,  but  his  actions, 
judged  by  our  standard,  would  fit  him  for  Port- 
land rather  than  the  pulpit  of  St.  Paul's.  It  is 
absurd  to  judge  of  religious  characters  apart 
from  the  moral  level  of  their  own  time.  Even 
Christianity,  with  all  its  lustre  of  spiritual 
revelation,  has  had  to  wait  for,  and  to  woxk 
with,  the  tardy  evolution  of  conscience  age  after 


42          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

age.  This  slow  and  universal  movement  has 
put  the  common  man  of  to-day  in  important 
respects  far  above  the  saints  of  even  Christian 
centuries.  And  there  is  no  room  for  a  sneer 
in  this.  When  we  read  of  Augustine  advo- 
cating religious  persecution,  of  Calvin  advising 
our  protector  Somerset  "to  punish  well  by 
the  sword  Catholics  and  fanatic  gospellers," 
and  especially  to  avoid  moderation,  and  a 
saintly  Fenelon  approving  the  dragonnades, 
there  is  here  no  argument  against  sainthood, 
nor  against  those  men  as  though  they  were 
mere  pretenders  to  it.  All  that  such  illustra- 
tions show  is,  that  the  noblest  personalities 
obey  the  la-w  of  their  environments.  The  light 
in  them,  showing  clear  and  full  on  certain  sides, 
is  on  others  merged  in  the  common  conscious- 
ness of  the  time. 

It  is  not  along  such  lines  that  the  subject  is 
really  reached.  No  enlightenment  comes,  on 
this  or  any  other  theme,  from  the  process  of 
picking  holes  in  the  coats  of  great  men  of  the 
past,  doing  their  best  under  barbarous  condi- 
tions. The  really  important  study  here  is  as 
to  the  special  dangers  of  what  may  be  called 
the  spiritual  temperament.  Religion  in  its 
wholeness  is,  of  course,  something  far  other 


THE    SINS   OP   SAINTS.  43 

than  a  temperament.  There  are,  neverthe- 
less, departments  of  its  expression  for  which 
certain  temperaments  seem  specially  fitted, 
and  the  possessors  of  these  are  almost  certain 
to  be  chosen  as  guides  and  leaders.  There  are 
varieties  here,  widely  differing,  and  an  accur- 
ate analysis  would  have  to  take  in  a  large 
gradation  of  subtle  shadings.  Speaking 
broadly,  however,  there  are  two  well-marked 
forms  of  religious  character,  each  wielding 
immense  power,  each  capable  of  noble  service, 
but  open  both  of  them  to  dangerous  and  even 
deadly  defects.  We  may  call  them,  respec- 
tively, the  aesthetic  and  the  ascetic. 

The  former,  which  in  certain  varieties  might 
perhaps  be  even  better  described  as  the 
emotional,  is  singularly  open  to  impression. 
Delicately  strung,  with  an  artist's  soul  for 
beauty,  vibrating  to  life's  subtlest  overtones, 
with  an  intense  sense  of  the  awe  and  mystery 
of  life,  it  is  made  for  the  religion  of  feeling. 
Its  faith  at  the  fullest  is  a  rapture,  an  ecstasy. 
It  is  an  epicureanism  of  the  higher  sensations. 
It  beholds  visions,  it  listens  inwardly  to 
melodies  which  no  mortal  music  ever  made, 
and  when  it  comes  to  expression,  there  are  none 
can  speak  so  pleadingly,  so  persuasively.  Men 


44          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

listen  as  to  angel  voices.  But  all  this  is  at  a 
price.  Humanity  would  have  got  on  badly 
enough  for  its  religion  without  this  tempera- 
ment, but  still  worse  had  it  been  the  only  one. 
As  if  to  teach  the  lesson  of  the  human 
solidarity,  the  lesson  that  the  whole  world  of 
us,  and  no  one  individual  or  type,  is  the  true 
man,  we  find  this  character  full  of  weaknesses 
and  leaning  always  heavily  upon  others. 

There  have  been,  indeed,  souls  of  this  order, 
with  a  beautiful  spiritual  expression,  and  yet 
so  halting  on  other  sides  that  they  could  not 
even  preserve  a  decent  morality.  No  more 
truly  spiritual  mind  or  greater  spiritual  teacher 
existed  in  the  England  of  his  time  than  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge,  but,  on  the  side  of  conduct, 
what,  to  say  the  least,  a  poverty-stricken 
record  !  And  in  the  next  generation  we  have 
poor  Hartley  Coleridge,  with  religious  instincts, 
fully  as  deep  and  keen,  and  the  speech  of  an 
angel,  yet  mingled  with  animal  outbursts  which 
led  him  periodically  to  the  sty  !  The  genius 
for  recognising  spiritual  beauty  has,  indeed, 
been  too  often  weighted  with  an  over-master- 
ing passion  for  the  sensuous.  Our  antinomian 
has  soared  so  high  as  to  get  quite  out  of  sight 
of  the  Ten  Commandments.  Within  Chateau- 


THE    SINS   OF   SAINTS.  45 

briand,  says  a  modern  critic,  was  an  obscene 
Chateaubriand,  and  the  same  was  true  of 
Lamartine.  Often  enough  the  prophet  of  this 
order,  after  the  moments  of  his  highest  exalta- 
tion, finds  himself  at  closest  grips  with  the 
devil. 

Apart,  however,  from  such  open  lapses, 
there  are  other  weaknesses  of  the  emotional 
religious  temperament  in  much  need  of  candid 
treatment,  but  which  we  cannot  stop  even  to 
name.  One  only  may  we  find  room  for  in 
passing,  and  that  is  its  frequent  lack  of  sheer 
truthfulness.  That  defect  in  the  religious 
minds  of  former  ages  is  giving  us  no  end  of 
trouble  to-day.  If  only  the  makers  of  church 
chronicles  had  had  the  grace  to  observe  accur- 
ately and  record  faithfully !  If  only  Pascal's 
maxim  that  "the  first  of  Christian  truths  is 
that  truth  should  be  loved  above  all  "  could 
have  been  inscribed  on  the  wall  of  every  theo- 
logian's study  !  As  it  is  we  have  the  era  of 
pious  frauds,  a  Saint  Bonaventura  stuffing  his 
life  of  another  saint  with  impossible  legends, 
and  a  Eitualist  Oxford  don  of  the  nineteenth 
century  emitting  the  sentiment,  "  Make  your- 
selves clear  that  you  are  justified  in  deception 
and  then  lie  like  a  trooper !  "  Before  we  have 


46          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

got  much  further  in  the  twentieth  century  it 
is  to  be  hoped  we  shall  have  made  up  our  minds 
that  religion  shall  at  least  speak  the  truth. 

We  have  space  in  closing  for  the  barest 
mention  of  that  other  variety  of  the  religious 
temperament — the  ascetic — and  of  the  moral 
defects  which  beset  it.  This  character,  of 
which  every  age  produces  specimens,  with  its 
superb  reaction  against  the  slothful  indulgence 
of  the  masses,  develops  often  into  a  potent  and 
magnificent  spiritual  leadership.  Founding 
itself  on  a  heroic  mysticism  that  discerns  from 
the  beginning  the  essential  emptiness  of 
material  and  sensuous  pleasures,  it  presses  on 
behind  the  veil  to  find  its  joy  in  spiritual 
reality.  It  is  enamoured  of  renunciation,  and 
finds  a  marvellous  liberty  in  following  that 
austere  road  which  St.  John  of  the  Cross 
indicates  in  his  motto :  "  Whatever  you  find 
pleasant  to  soul  or  body,  abandon ;  whatsoever 
is  painful,  embrace  it."  Men  of  this  tempera- 
ment—and Pusey  was  a  conspicuous  example — 
have  a  sense  of  sin  and  shortcoming  which 
causes  them  at  times  the  keenest  anguish. 
Yet,  strangely  enough,  the  defect  most  con- 
spicuous in  them  is  one  of  which  they  never 
think  of  accusing  themselves.  They  have 


THE   SINS   OP   SAINTS.  47 

found  an  inner  world  -which  is  good  and 
glorious,  but  they  have  made  the  prodigious 
mistake  of  declaring  the  world  they  have 
renounced  to  be  intrinsically  bad.  It  is  not 
so,  and  that  they  have  failed  to  see  its  good- 
ness and  enjoy ableness  is,  if  they  only  knew 
it,  a  fault  far  greater  than  those  they  deplore. 

It  is  time  we  were  done  with  the  pseudo- 
Christianity  whose  leading  characteristic  is  the 
exhalation  of  gloom.  There  is  no  grace  in  this 
November  fog.  Sourness  is  a  crime  of  Use 
humanite.  To  what,  0  my  bilious  brother,  do 
you  propose  to  convert  the  world?  To  your 
own  griinness?  It  were  hardly  an  improve- 
ment. The  world  wants  saving  into  soundness 
and  light,  and  it  shows  a  healthy  discrimina- 
tion in  refusing  the  overtures  of  morbidity 
and  darkness.  When  the  Church  thoroughly 
understands  this  it  will  mend  some  of  its  ways. 
In  teaching  the  higher  life  of  the  invisible,  it 
will  show  always  its  appreciation  of  that  fair 
world  of  the  seen  which  is  the  other's  vestibule. 
It  will  teach  that  man  belongs  to  the  two,  and 
may  be  a  proficient  in  both.  It  was  said  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott  that  he  enjoyed  more  in 
twenty-four  hours  than  other  men  did  in  a 
week.  It  should  be  counted  to  him  as  a  grace. 


43          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

The  man  who  enjoys  helps  others  to  enjoy. 
He  cannot  keep  his  sunshine  to  himself.  It  is 
here  that,  turning  from  the  imperfections  of 
its  followers,  we  see  the  Divine  wholeness  of 
the  Master-life.  A  Prophet  of  the  invisible, 
Christ  knew  and  loved  the  seen.  The  world  of 
birds  and  flowers,  of  happy  sunshine  and 
human  fellowships,  was  also  His  world.  A 
Messenger  from  the  Centre,  He  dwelt  with 
gladness  in  the  outer  court,  knowing  it  also 
was  a  part  of  the  Father's  house. 


VI. 
The    World's    Beauty. 

IN  the  glowing  summer  days  we  are  Nature's 
•willing  thralls.  She  invites  us  into  her  world 
to  come  and  play.  With  the  glee  of  children, 
we  accept  her  invitation,  and  wander  entranced 
in  her  realm  of  enchantments.  To  us  all, 
prince  or  peasant,  she  offers  royal  entertain- 
ment. We  step  out  of  doors  and  are  at  once 
encircled  by  a  more  than  regal  pomp.  She 
feasts  us  with  beauty.  No  need  to  travel  a 
thousand  miles  for  it ;  it  is  here  at  hand.  Our 
own  island  is  packed  with  loveliness.  We 
wander  over  four  continents  to  discover  we  had 
left  the  best  behind  us.  And  this  festival  has 
been  repeating  itself  without  fail  through 
thousands  of  years.  We  talk  of  the  dark  ages, 
but  it  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  through 
them  all  Nature  was  giving  our  ancestors  such 
good  times.  Chaucer's  springs  and  summers 
were  just  as  intoxicating  as  ours.  The  birds 
sang  as  merrily,  the  wild  flowers  were  as  sweet, 

4 


50  OUKSELVES   AND    THE    UNIVEESE. 

the  leaf  of  elm  and  oak  was  as  green  and 
comely,  the  streams  were  as  clear,  the  skies  as 
blue  as  in  this  year  of  grace.  And  it  was  good 
to  be  alive. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  us  to  investigate  the 
meaning  of  the  world's  beauty  ?  How  conies  it 
that  Nature  everywhere,  whether  in  the  wing  of 
insect,  or  the  clothing  of  the  forest,  or  the  blue 
concave  above,  or  the  clear  depths  of  the  river,  or 
the  craggy  summit  of  the  mountain,  shapes  her- 
self to  this  loveliness,  this  grandeur  ?  Why  do 
we  call  a  thing  beautiful  ?  Whait  is  beauty  ? 
Here  we  are  upon  questions  that  go  deep.  In 
search  of  answers  we  find  ourselves  thrown 
straight  back  upon  the  soul  and  its  structure. 
For  the  beautiful  is  evidently  a  spiritual  per- 
ception. Put  a  horse  in  front  of  our  noblest 
prospect  and  it  sees  nothing  of  what  we  mean 
by  the  word.  And  the  perception  is  one  that 
unfolds  only  gradually  in  man  himself.  The 
savage  has  little  sense  of  it.  It  has  taken  ages 
to  develop  this  special  response.  And  yet  it 
lies  in  the  depth  of  every  soul,  and  in  propor- 
tion as  that  soul  moves  towards  its  typal 
perfection  does  the  sentiment  find  amplitude 
and  volume  of  expression. 

But  what,  we  may  again  ask,  is  this  response  ? 


THE  WOKLD'S  BEAUTY.  51 

What  is  contained  in  our  idea  of  beautj  ?  On 
this  subject  philosophers  and  scientists  have 
discoursed  abundantly  from  varying  standpoints. 
Materialists,  who  have  felt  themselves  here  put 
on  their  mettle,  have  discussed  it  as  an  affair 
of  curves,  surfaces  and  sensory  impressions. 
Schopenhauer  has  treated  it  with  a  more  than 
usual  exaggeration  and  incoherence  of  statement. 
When  all  has  been  said  it  remains  that  tne 
recognition  of  beauty  by  the  mind  can  be 
explained  satisfactorily  in  only  one  way.  The 
term  we  have  just  used  is  in  itself  the  key. 
Our  feeling  here  is  a  re-cognition,  that  is  a  re- 
knowing,  a  reminder  of  what  the  soul  already 
knows,  of  what  is  native  to  its  realm.  Schell- 
ing  is  on  the  track  of  all  this  when  he  treats 
of  the  external  world  as  another  expression  of 
the  same  eternal  Life  that  finds  itself  in  our 
consciousness.  The  beauty  of  Nature  is  the  work 
of  a  supreme  Artist  whose  fundamental  ideas 
are  reproduced,  however  faintly,  in  our  own. 
Without  such  a  relationship  to  begin  with  there 
could  be  no  possible  recognition  of  beauty  on 
our  part.  A  painter  who  exhibited  his  picture 
would  be  astonished  to  learn  that  the  public 
were  admiring  it  on  the  strength  of  ideas 
entirely  foreign  to  any  he  had  himself  put  into 


52          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

it.  The  very  basis  of  our  comprehension,  not  to 
say  appreciation,  of  a  picture's  merit  lies  in  the 
fellowship  of  our  feeling  with  that  of  the  artist. 
And  the  law  which  obtains  in  the  Academy  rules, 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  through  all  the  worlds. 

But  we  have  not  nearly  exhausted  the  pro- 
blems opened  by  this  theme.  Another,  and  a 
by  no  means  simple  one,  comes  up  when  we 
touch  the  relation  of  beauty  to  morality.  We 
remember  once  propounding  it  to  a  couple  of 
Anglican  clergymen,  in  whose  company  we  were 
watching  a  gorgeous  sunset  on  the  Jungfrau. 
"Is  there  any  link -between  this  splendour  and 
the  beauty  of  holiness  ?  Is  there  any  natural 
affinity  between  the  grace  of  sainthood  and  the 
grace  of  external  form  ?  "  The  question  seemed 
new  to  them,  and  to  be  hardly  a  serious  one. 
There  was  an  excuse  for  this  attitude,  for  at 
first  sight  the  subjects  seem  scarcely  com- 
pressible into  the  same  category.  And  further 
observation  appears  to  add  positive  reasons 
against  any  such  alliance.  The  sense  for 
external  loveliness  has  had  apparently  no  con- 
nection with  high  moral  character.  The  ages 
in  which  it  has  been  most  conspicuous,  as  that 
of  the  Greeks  under  Pericles,  and  of  the 
Renaissance  in  Italy,  were  conspicuous,  we 


THE  WORLD'S   BEAUTT.  53 

are  told,  for   their  dissoluteness.     The   artist 
world  has  been  generally  a  Bohemian  world. 

But  statements  of  this  kind  need  to  be  taken 
with  a  certain  reservation.  When  we  hear 
these  sweeping  verdicts  upon  certain  classes 
and  periods,  we  are  reminded  of  Talleyrand's 
saying:  "H  n'y  a  rien  qui  s'arrange  aussi 
facilement  que  les  faits."  As  to  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  let  us  remember  it  produced  a 
remarkable  literature  devoted  to  the  idealisa- 
tion of  love  and  the  redemption  of  it  from  the 
grosser  elements.  Nor  were  all  its  artists 
libertines.  It  produced  a  Michael  Angelo  as 
well  as  a  Benvenuto  Cellini.  The  designer  of 
St.  Peter's,  the  painter  of  the  Sistine  Chapel, 
the  writer  of  the  sonnets  had  artist  enough  in 
him  for  half  a  dozen  ordinary  reputations. 
And  yet  it  is  he  who  could  say — we  have  it  in 
one  of  his  letters  to  his  father — "  It  is  enough 
to  have  bread  and  to  live  in  the  faith  of  Christ, 
even  as  I  do  here,  for  I  live  humbly,  neither  do 
I  care  for  the  life  or  honours  of  this  world." 
No  man  in  these  later  ages  has  had  a  mind 
more  teeming  with  images  of  immortal  beauty 
than  our  own  Milton,  but  "  his  soul  was  like  a 
star  and  dwelt  apart."  Our  own  times  have 
seen  a  Wordsworth,  a  Buskin,  a  Tennyson, 


S 


54          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

natures  all  of  them  in  which  the  sense  of 
beauty  both  in  Nature  and  in  art  reached  its 
highest  expression,  and  all  of  whom  found  in 
it  an  immediate  ally  of  spiritual  perfection. 
And  when  we  mention  the  contrary  instances, 
what  do  they  prove?  Not  the  immorality, 
assuredly,  of  these  men's  sense  of  form,  but  the 
imperfect  development  of  their  other  senses. 
Their  report  of  one  portion  of  God's  Palace 
Beautiful  is  not  the  less  accurate  that  they  saw 
not  the  whole  of  it.  That  a  given  musician  is  a 
rake  is  no  evidence  that  the  laws  of  music  which 
he  obeys  are  not  Divine.  He  has  eyes  only 
for  a  piece  of  Heaven's  law,  not  its  wholeness. 
The  whole  argument  here,  in  fact,  seems  summed 
in  the  nature  of  Christ.  If  the  Gospels  speak 
truly  there  was  never  a  nature  that  thrilled 
more  exquisitely  to  the  world's  beauty.  Yet 
never  nature  set  forth  so  surely  God's  holiness. 
The  more  comprehensively  the  subject  is 
studied  the  more  sure  will  become  our  convic- 
tion that  there  is  in  all  beauty  an  essential 
unity  of  idea  whose  root  is  in  God.  The  gran- 
deur of  great  deeds,  of  great  characters,  appeals 
to  the  same  faculty  in  us,  and  stirs  the  same 
emotions  as  the  grandeur  of  the  mountains  or 
of  the  sea.  If  we  could  realise  it  as  possible 


THE  WORLD'S  BEAUTY.  55 

that  a  pure  soul  could  take  form,  we  feel 
instinctively  that  the  form  would  be  beautiful. 
How  intimate  the  alliance  is  shown  by  the 
workings  of  character  upon  feature.  The 
nobler  spiritual  instincts  mould  the  flesh  into 
curves  of  greatness,  suffuse  it  with  a  glow  of 
ethereal  brightness.  As  if  to  put  its  final  seal 
upon  this  view  of  things,  the  Bible  gives  us  in 
the  Apocalypse  a  series  of  magnificent  con- 
ceptions, in  which  righteousness  is  clothed  with, 
and  set  in  the  midst  of,  the  utmost  perfection 
of  external  splendour.  Often  separated  and 
far  removed  from  each  other  in  the  earthly 
struggle,  the  two  elements  are  here  exhibited 
in  their  true  and  everlasting  union. 

The  topic  as  it  thus  opens  is  far  more  than  a 
merely  speculative  one.  If  we  admit  what  has 
here  been  advanced  we  must  admit  with  it  some 
important  practical  consequences.  For  instance, 
the  inculcation  of  righteousness,  the  preaching 
of  God's  Kingdom,  should  ever  link  itself  with 
the  soul's  innate  sense  of  beauty.  The  ugly 
may  everywhere  be  left  to  the  devil  as  his 
monopoly.  It  is  curious  to  note  here  how  the 
inmost  in  man  has  claimed  and  gained  its  rights 
in  even  the  most  adverse  circumstances.  In  the 
barest  conventicle  and  in  what  has  seemed  the 


56          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

most  ostentatious  absence  of  form,  wherever 
men  have  been  attracted  and  impressed,  it  will 
be  found  that  they  have  been  reached  and  held 
by  their  sense  of  the  beautiful.  It  was  the 
music  of  the  pleading  voice,  or  the  glowing 
splendour  of  the  imagery,  or  the  melodious 
rhythm  of  the  words,  or,  deeper  even  than  these, 
the  feeling  that  a  pure,  beautiful  soul  was  here 
revealing  itself,  which  drew  them.  Other 
attachments  may  come  later,  but  these  first. 
The  Divine  words  of  Scripture  double  their 
power  upon  us  when  set  to  great  music.  "  He 
shall  feed  His  flock  like  a  Shepherd,"  gets  to 
the  very  roots  as  it  sings  through  us  in  Handel's 
strains.  How  perverse,  in  view  of  all  this,  the 
avoidance  of  beauty  in  our  worship  as  though  it 
were  a  snare !  To  offer  a  drab  service  to  Him 
who,  outside  our  conventicle,  is  filling  heaven 
and  earth  with  the  splendour  of  His  handi- 
work! It  were  an  appropriate  question  for 
Christian  conferences  how  far  the  cultivated 
youth  of  our  generation  have  been  alienated  by 
misconceptions  of  this  sort,  and  what  steps  can 
be  taken  in  the  opposite  direction  to  recover  the 
lost  ground.  The  business  of  the  Christian 
persuader  is,  as  a  French  moralist  has  said, 
"  to  make  truth  lovely." 


THE  WORLD'S  BEAUTY.  57 

But  the  subject  has  a  wider  bearing  than  its 
application  to  Sunday  and  to  Church  worship. 
Our  municipal  life  is  as  yet  only  at  its  begin- 
ning. There  are  a  hundred  different  sides 
along  which  it  has  to  develop,  but  one  of  the 
greatest  and  most  fruitful  will  be  in  its  educa- 
tion and  satisfaction  of  the  public  sense  of  the 
beautiful.  The  mass  of  English  people  are 
children  here  where  the  ancient  Greeks  were 
grown  men.  One  wonders  what  a  cultivated 
Athenian  would  have  thought  of  our  black 
country !  In  coming  generations  our  towns 
will  be,  not  an  outrage  upon  Nature,  but  a 
blend  with  her,  a  heightening  through  art  of 
her  primitive  graces.  And  the  beauty  cultivated 
will  be  that  which  appeals  not  only  to  the  eye, 
but  to  the  ear  also.  Why  can  we  not  have  in 
England  what  one  has  so  often  met  on  the 
Continent,  where,  wandering  through  some  old- 
world  city,  the  ear  has  suddenly  been  entranced 
by  delicious  choral  music,  rendered  by  a  mass 
of  trained  citizen  voices,  while  a  crowd  of  their 
fellow  townsmen,  silent,  absorbed,  drink  in  the 
charmed  notes?  We  shall  be  making  an 
approach  to  the  municipal  ideal  when  the 
whole  civic  atmosphere  is  so  penetrated  with 
high  and  ennobling  influences,  with  such 


58  OuKSELVES   AND   THE    UNIVERSE. 

elements  of  art  and  refinement,  that  the 
meanest  citizen,  by  the  mere  fact  of  mingling 
with  it,  will  find  his  own  life  immeasurably 
enriched.  In  these  nobler  communities  of  the 
future  there  will  be  no  room  for  the  antithesis 
which  Plutarch  draws  between  the  different 
Athenian  administrators:  "Themistocles,  Cimon 
and  Pericles  filled  the  city  with  magnificent 
buildings,  .  .  .  but  virtue  was  the  only 
object  that  Aristides  had  in  view."  It  will  be 
better  than  this  when  virtue  blossoms  into 
beauty  as  the  flower  springs  from  and  beautifies 
the  tree. 

To  sum  up.  The  belief  in  beauty  is  part  of 
our  belief  in  God.  Tke  Universe  strives  after 
it  as  the  realisation  of  His  idea.  Ugliness  is  to 
be  striven  against  as  a  frustration  of  Heaven's 
plan.  Beauty  of  character  and  beauty  of  form 
are  essentially  allied,  and  should  be  striven  for 
as  elements  in  the  wholeness  of  life.  Our  com- 
munal life  should  be  an  intimate,  harmonious 
blend  of  the  spiritual  and  the  material,  each 
recognised  as  a  portion  of  God's  holiness. 
Their  true  union  will  produce  a  social  structure 
whose  enduring  splendour  shall  be  a  reflex 
of  the  holy  city,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem  which 
John  saw  descending  out  of  heaven  from  God. 


YII. 
Of   Face  Architecture. 

THE  interest  in  face  architecture  is,  in  certain 
circles,  centred  almost  exclusively  in  one 
department  of  it,  that  of  decoration.  From 
"  smart  society "  emerge  from  time  to  time 
hints  of  the  ever  deepening  mysteries  of  the 
lady's  dressing-table.  Fortune  awaits  the  pro- 
ducer of  a  successful  wash  or  dye  or  powder. 
There  are  face  artists  who  specialise  upon  the 
lip,  the  nose,  the  eye,  the  eyebrow.  There  is, 
indeed,  nothing  new  in  this.  The  story  is  as 
old  as  the  world.  Montaigne  gives  us  astonish- 
ing stories  of  the  tortures  undergone  by  ladiea 
of  his  time  in  the  pursuit  of  beauty.  There  was 
one  at  Paris  who,  "  to  get  new  skin,  endured 
having  her  face  flayed."  He  adds:  "I  have  seen 
some  swallow  gravel,  ashes,  coals,  dust,  tallow, 
candles,  only  to  get  a  pale,  bleak  colour." 
Things  were  as  bad  evidently  in  the  classic 
times.  Tibullus  has  some  amusing  lines  on  the 
expedients  of  the  Roman  ladies  for  getting  rid 


60          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

of  grey  hairs  and  for  the  securing  of  fresh  com- 
plexions. And  ancient  Egypt  and  antique 
Babylon  were  in  these  respects  no  whit  better. 

Outside  the  circle  of  beauties,  professional 
and  otherwise,  there  are  other  forms  of  face 
architecture,  still  of  the  external  and  decorative 
order,  that  are  not  without  interest.  It  is  a 
marvellous  gift,  which  only  a  fool  would  despise, 
that  enables  a  Macready  or  an  Irving  to  repro- 
duce the  living  aspect  of  a  Eichard  III.,  to  look 
on  us  with  the  face  of  Hamlet,  to  make  hate 
and  love,  ferocity  and  magnanimity,  humour 
and  grief  reveal  themselves  successively 
in  glance  and  feature.  Great  mimicry  has  its 
place  and  function.  But  it  is  horrible  out  of 
place.  Cowper  has  drawn  the  picture  of  the 
pulpit  poseur  "  who  mounts  the  rostrum  with  a 
skip,"  and  there  scans  and  arranges  hair  and 
feature  with  a  pocket  glass.  Goethe  deals  this 
performer  an  even  heavier  blow  when,  in  the 
conversation  between  Wagner  and  Faust,  to 
the  former's  remark,  "  A  preacher  has  a  good 
deal  to  learn  from  the  actor,"  Faust  replies, 
"Yes,  when  the  preacher  is  simply  an  actor 
himself."  There  are,  however,  face  arrange- 
ments, still  only  in  the  region  of  mere  feature 
drill,  which  we  regard  with  a  kindlier  feeling. 


Qv  FACE  ARCHITECTURE.  61 

What  a  moving  passage  that  where  Cicero 
describes  the  "  death  etiquette "  of  the  gladi- 
ator !  "  What  gladiator,  however  mediocre, 
ever  groans  ?  Who  of  them  ever  changes 
countenance  ?  Which  of  them,  when  down, 
ready  to  be  despatched,  as  much  as  draws  back 
his  neck  from  the  stroke  ?  "  It  is  the  demean- 
our sought  bj  the  modern  army  officer,  who  in 
the  service  books  is  directed,  when  his  men  are 
under  fire,  to  keep  at  the  front  with  an  uncon- 
cerned air,  and  if  himself  struck  to  fall  with  as 
little  noise  as  possible.  A  pose  this,  if  you  will, 
but  one  worthy  of  a  man. 

But  these,  after  all,  are  only  surface  views  on 
the  subject  of  face  architecture.  It  is  astonish- 
ing, considering  the  interest  people  have  in  such 
phases  of  it,  that  they  do  not  go  a  little  deeper. 
For  we  are  not  yet  arrived  at  the  real  face 
artists.  To  know  them  and  their  work  is  to 
know  the  central  powers  in  heaven  and  earth. 
The  human  face,  in  any  approach  of  it  to  the 
ideal,  is  the  greatest  creation  of  time.  That 
such  a  result  should  have  been  brought  out  of 
man's  prehistoric  and  animal  ancestry  over- 
whelms us  with  the  thought  of  the  measureless 
duration,  the  infinite  patience,  the  unswerving 
continuity  of  Nature's  process.  Everything 


62          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

conceivable  of  beauty  and  power  is  summed  up 
for  us  in  a  great  face.  Plato  saw  there  tlie 
consummation  of  the  moral  and  the  physical. 
"  All  the  greatest  painting,"  says  Kuskin,  "  is 
of  the  human  face."  The  true  artist  always 
knows  this,  and  makes  the  rest  of  his  canvas 
an  accessory  to  those  two  or  three  inches  at  the 
centre  where  a  living  soul  looks  on  us  through 
luminous  eyes.  In  a  picture  such  as  that  of 
"Christ  leaving  the  Pretorium"  we  study  in 
succession  the  steps,  the  building,  the  crowd, 
the  soldiers  as  all  leading  us  onward  to  the 
central  interest  —  that  thorn- crowned  face, 
marred  and  worn,  on  which  we  could  gaze  for 
ever. 

What  builds  the  face?  Environment,  of 
course,  for  one  thing.  The  degree  of  latitude 
in  which  a  man  finds  himself  not  only  paints 
his  complexion,  but  alters  the  ground-plan 
of  his  features.  America  and  Australia  are 
developing  each  a  distinct  expression  of  their 
own.  Climate,  soil,  food  and  occupation  among 
them  have  wrought  the  race  physiognomy 
which  separates  Turanian  from  Semite  and 
Aryan  from  Negro.  Buckle  and  his  school 
have  sought  to  make  this  the  whole  explana- 
tion. Give  them  these  factors  and  they  will 


OF  FACE  ARCHITECTURE.  63 

manufacture  our  whole  man  for  us,  face  and 
all.  But  their  easy  induction  does  not  satisfy 
the  deeper  thought  of  to-day.  Humanity,  it  is 
being  discovered,  cannot  be  reckoned  up  in 
terms  of  a  rule-of -three  sum.  We  have  not 
yet  reached  our  real  face-builder. 

As  we  traverse  that  unrivalled  picture-gallery 
the  open  street,  and  study  what  we  find  there, 
we  get  the  certainty  that  what  has  made  the 
faces  here  is  not  so  much  the  force  without  as 
the  force  within.  We  are  in  the  presence  of 
spirits  who  are  the  true  artists  of  feature. 
Charles  Kingsley  has  somewhere  a  quaint 
sentence  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  soul  secret- 
ing the  body  as  a  crustacean  secretes  its  shell. 
It  exaggerates,  doubtless,  but  the  truth  lies  on 
that  line.  If  we  try  to  be  materialists  on  this 
point,  our  very  language  turns  upon  us.  What 
do  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  "  a  pure  face  "  ? 
Nothing  that  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  flesh 
and  blood.  What  was  it  that  Charles  Lamb 
saw  on  the  countenances  of  the  Quaker  ladies 
on  their  way  to  the  Bishopsgate  meeting,  making 
them  "as  troops  of  shining  ones"?  Very 
much,  we  suppose,  like  the  something  that 
people  saw  on  the  face  of  St.  Yincent  de  Paul, 
and  which  transfigured  features  that  were  in 


64          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

themselves  homely  to  ugliness.  It  was  the 
gleam  of  the  supernatural  in  man,  the 
shining  through  mortal  flesh  of  a  sun  behind 
the  sun. 

This  is  the  highest  beauty  of  the  world. 
There  are  faces  that  are  gospels,  and  there  is 
only  one  way  of  making  them.  They  shine 
along  the  course  of  Christian  history  as  no- 
where else.  It  was  such  a  face  as  looked  upon 
England  at  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century 
from  over  the  emaciated  form  of  John  Wycliffe. 
We  do  not  wonder  that,  as  his  disciple,  John 
Thorpe,  says,  "  Very  many  of  the  chief  men  of 
this  kingdom  frequently  held  counsel  with  him, 
were  devotedly  attached  to  him,  and  guided 
themselves  by  his  manner  of  life."  There  was 
a  sunshine  here,  they  realised,  which  savoured 
of  another  summer  than  England's  June  could 
create.  It  has  been  so  with  all  the  great  souls. 
To  look  at  these  faces  people  have  made 
pilgrimages  and  endured  all  manner  of  priva- 
tions. We  feel  what  throbbed  in  the  heart  of 
Peter  the  Venerable  when,  writing  to  Bernard, 
he  declares :  "  If  it  were  permitted  to  me,  and 
if  God  willed  it,  I  should  prefer  to  live  with 
you  and  be  attached  to  you  by  an  indissoluble 
tie,  than  to  be  first  among  mortals  and  to  sit 


OP  FACE  ARCHITECTURE.  65 

on  a  throne."  We  do  not  know  what  the 
features  were  of  Macrina,  the  sister  of  Basil, 
and  of  Gregory  of  Nyssa.  But  we  know  the 
kind  of  light  that  shone  through  them  when  we 
read  what  they  say  of  her,  how  she  woke  the 
one  "  as  out  of  a  deep  sleep  to  the  true  light  of 
the  Gospel,"  and  excited  in  the  other  an  affec- 
tion so  deep  that,  as  he  tells  us,  "  when  they 
had  buried  her  body  he  kissed  the  earth  of  her 
grave." 

It  is  this  mystery  of  the  face  and  what  is 
behind  it,  that  has  set  Christian  minds  in  every 
age  wondering  what  were  the  lines  of  that 
Galilean  countenance,  the  radiance  from  which 
has  made  another  and  a  higher  daylight  for  the 
world.  Beneath  the  dust  that  covers  old-world 
cities  are  lying,  perhaps,  precious  memorials 
that  may  yet  be  unearthed.  Who  knows  that 
we  may  not  yet  recover  the  statue  of  Christ 
that  Eusebius  saw  at  Caesarea  Philippi,  or  some 
of  those  portraits  of  the  Master  which  he  had 
also  seen?  Which  tradition  of  the  face  was 
the  true  one,  that  followed  by  Justin  Martyr, 
by  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  by  Tertullian, 
which  spoke  of  it  as  "  without  form  or  comeli- 
ness " ;  or  that  of  Jerome  and  Augustine,  which 
declared  it  divinely  beautiful  ?  It  may  be  both 

6 


66          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEBSE. 

are  true.  We  are  sure,  at  least,  of  the  latter. 
With  a  possible  homeliness,  or  even  rugged- 
ness,  of  outline  there  shone  through  a  trans- 
figuring splendour  which  awed  and  fascinated. 
Christ's  "  Follow  Me "  conquered  men  not 
so  much  by  the  words  as  by  the  look  that 
accompanied. 

When  we  now  ask  again  how  the  great  faces 
arise  we  seem  nearer  the  answer.  They  are 
reflections  of  faces  that  belong  to  another 
world.  Behind  the  fleshly  face  is  the  soul's 
face.  And  the  soul's  face  is  a  great  spiritual 
absorbent.  As  plants  spread  their  surface  to 
the  sun  and  drink  in  the  rays  that  beat  upon 
them,  transforming  all  into  life  and  beauty,  so 
in  these  natures  the  spiritual  upper  surface 
along  its  whole  length  and  breadth,  is  open  to 
the  impact  of  pulsations  emanating  incessantly 
from  the  Centre  by  which  all  souls  live.  And 
not  one  of  these  pulsations  is  lost.  It  is  woven 
into  the  structure  of  the  soul  and  reflected  in 
its  expression.  The  face  becomes  thus  a 
register  of  the  life  we  are  living.  It  is  the 
book  in  which  our  history  is  written,  a  faithful 
record,  with  no  item  omitted,  and  which,  to  eyes 
deeply  enough  initiated,  can  be  read  clear  from 
end  to  end. 


OP  FACE  ARCHITECTURE.  67 

A  topic  like  this  teems  with  practical  lessons. 
The  Church  should  be  a  great  face  builder.  It 
has  been  in  the  past,  but  it  needs  to  study  its 
models  afresh.  Historical  Christianity  has 
developed  face  types  that  were  never  in  the 
world  before.  The  spiritual  riches  to  which  it 
has  introduced  humanity  have  translated  them- 
selves into  new  glances  of  the  eye,  into  fresh, 
beautiful  harmonisations  of  feature.  But  its 
artistry  here  has  not  been  always  of  the  best. 
By  crude,  at  times  terrible,  misrepresentations 
of  Divine  things,  it  has  created  the  morbid  face 
and  the  fanatic  face ;  it  has  overspread  honest 
features  with  the  gloom  of  religious  melan- 
cholia. Religion  must  have  done  with  this 
business.  Its  work  is  to  weave  brightness  into 
human  souls.  Let  us  take  to  heart  this  saying 
of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson:  "In  my  view  one 
dark  dispirited  word  is  harmful,  a  crime  of 
lese  humanite,  a  piece  of  acquired  evil ;  every 
bright  word  or  picture,  like  every  pleasant  air 
of  music,  is  a  piece  of  pleasure  set  afloat." 
Fathers  and  mothers  are  perhaps  here  the  most 
potent  workers  in  humanity's  church.  It  is 
theirs  to  mould  their  children's  faces  into  the 
comeliness  wrought  by  high  thought  and  noble 
inspirations.  Goodness  is  the  beginning  of 


68          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

beauty.  Young  spirits  growing  in  an  atmo- 
sphere of  true  thinking  and  true  feeling  are  all 
unconsciously  being  penetrated  by  harmonies 
which  shape  their  nature  into  ideal  forms. 

And  with  an  eye  thus  upon  others  we  are  to 
look  also  to  ourselves.  A  hundred  artists 
within  and  without  are  at  work  upon  our 
feature  and  expression,  but  it  is  from  us  they 
take  their  orders.  The  question  as  to  how  joy, 
grief,  gains,  losses,  the  shocks  of  change  and 
fortune  are  to  use  their  graving  tools,  depends 
on  the  instructions  we  give  them.  For  no 
event  is  wholly  outward  or  has  an  existence 
in  itself.  Its  whole  colour  and  aspect  are 
derived  from  the  soul  on  which  it  strikes.  To 
be  crucified  is  one  thing  to  a  thief,  a  wholly 
other  thing  to  a  Christ.  If  we  accept  all  life 
as  a  process  for  the  building  of  the  soul,  we 
shall  find  in  the  end  that  the  process  has  been 
a  double  one.  For  with  the  building  of  souls 
there  has  been  also  the  building  of  bodies.  Not 
these  of  flesh  through  which  the  soul  faintly 
shines,  but  spiritual  ones,  fit  for  immortal  life. 
And  to  these  shall  be  given  the  vision  of  that 
Model  after  which  all  their  Divine  lineaments 
have  been  fashioned.  "  For  they  shall  see  His 
face,  and  His  name  shall  be  in  their  foreheads," 


VIII. 
Westward    of    Fifty. 

A  FAMILIAR  line  of  pulpi^  exhortation  is  that 
which  regards  our  present  life  as  a  preparation, 
good  or  bad,  for  a  future  and  invisible  one. 
"What  we  do  here  and  now  will  enormously 
affect  what  we  become  yonder  and  then.  It 
would  be  fully  as  much  to  the  point,  and  with 
some  minds  even  more  efficacious,  if,  in  this 
view  of  life  as  a  preparation,  the  preacher  at 
times,  for  a  change,  confined  himself  to  our 
visible  career.  The  region  lying  westward  of 
fifty  is  one  which  we  shall  all  traverse  if  we 
live  long  enough,  and  it  is  a  doctrine  against 
which  no  sceptic  voice  can  be  raised  that  our 
experiences  there  will  be  largely  a  reaping  of 
what,  in,  the  earlier  period,  we  have  sown. 
That  a  successful  sowing  is  not  too  easy  is 
evident  from  the  failures  that  are  everywhere 
apparent.  How  frequent  and  disastrous  these 
failures  are  is  perhaps  best  illustrated  by 
the  bad  repute  which  old  age  has  fallen 


70  OUKSELVES  AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

into,   both  in  literature  and  in  the  popular 
imagination. 

There  have  been  philosophers,  such  as  Plato 
in  the  remote  distance  and  Fontenelle  nearer 
at  hand,  who  have  glorified  age  as  life's 
happiest  time,  but  the  general  verdict  has 
seemed  otherwise.  The  early  world  as  a  whole 
regarded  the  post-youth  period  almost  with  a 
shudder.  A  line  in  Mimnermus  tells  us  that 
"  when  the  appointed  time  of  youth  is  past  it 
is  better  to  die  forthwith  than  to  live." 
Anacreon  the  joyous,  the  poet  of  love  and 
wine,  finds  nothing  in  the  last  stage  but  the 
sense  of  privation  and  the  prospect  of  dread 
Avernus.  Horace,  his  Latin  counterpart,  sends 
across  his  past  the  futile  prayer,  "  Oh  !  that 
Jove  would  restore  to  me  the  years  that  are 
gone ! "  Montaigne,  who  considered  himself 
old  at  fifty-four,  declared  that  "old  age  set 
more  wrinkles  on  the  spirit  than  on  the  face." 
Even  Wordsworth,  with  his  immense  spiritual 
insight,  seems  afraid  of  life's  second  half. 
The  poet,  he  found,  did  not  usually  fare  well 
in  it. 

We  poets  begin  our  life  in  gladness, 

But  thereof  comes  in  the  end  satiety  and  madness. 

And  there  is  perhaps  nowhere  in  literature  a 


WESTWARD  OP  FIFTY.  71 

more  vivid  picture  of  desolation  than  that  of 
his  ' '  Small  Celandine  "  as  an  image  of  life's 
helpless  last  stage,  with  these  mournful  lines 
for  an  ending  : 

Oh,  man !  that  from  thy  fair  and  shining  youth, 
Age  might  but  take  the  things  youth  needed  not. 

And  there  is  undoubtedly  a  great  deal,  and 
that  not  merely  on  the  surface,  that  appears 
to  back  up  this  indictment.  Age  is  in  a  sense 
a  decline,  a  failure,  a  disease,  which  no 
medicine  can  cure.  Old  Eoger  Bacon's  curious 
"Libellus  de  Eetardandis  Senectutis  Acci- 
dentibus,"  in  the  various  means  it  proposes  for 
resisting  the  advance  of  the  enemy,  holds  out 
no  hope  of  finally  driving  him  off.  On  one 
great  side  of  our  life,  whatever  our  earlier 
precautions  and  preparations,  we  are,  after 
fifty,  certainly  on  the  down-grade.  We  have 
ceased  to  be  athletes.  We  can  no  longer  draw 
on  unlimited  physical  reserve.  The  sensualist 
must,  with  however  bad  a  grace,  give  up  his 
nuits  blanches.  He  finds  himself,  in  fact, 
disagreeably  occupied  with  the  bill  for  them, 
long  deferred,  and  with  a  prodigious  interest 
charged,  which  Nature  is  now  presenting  him. 
He  would  sympathise  heartily  with  the  senti- 


72          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEKSE. 

ment  of  a  law  lord  of  the  last  century  whose 
riotous  youth  had  brought  him  gout  in  the  later 
years,  when,  apostrophising  his  afflicted  ex- 
tremities, he  cried,  "  Confound  the  legs !  If 
I  had  known  they  were  to  carry  a  Lord  Chan- 
cellor I  would  have  taken  better  care  of 
them  !  " 

But  that  is  not  all,  nor  perhaps  the  worst.  It 
is  brought  as  one  of  the  fatal  accusations 
against  the  post-fifty  period  that  it  lacks 
interest.  A  man  has  by  that  time,  maybe, 
gained  a  fortune  to  discover  that  the  pleasures 
he  hoped  to  purchase  with  it  have  ceased  to  be 
pleasures.  A  deadly  monotony  has  set  in.  We 
have  got  to  the  bottom  of  things,  have  seen  the 
whole  show  and  begin  to  find  it  wearisome. 
This  note,  supposedly  a  modern  one,  is  really 
nothing  of  the  kind.  The  whole  flavour  of  the 
sentiment  had  been  tasted  nigh  two  millenniums 
ago  by  Marcus  Aurelius.  "A  little  while," 
says  he,  "is  enough  to  view  the  world  in,  for 
things  are  repeated  and  come  over  again  apace. 
It  signifies  not  a  farthing  whether  a  man  stands 
gazing  here  a  hundred,  or  a  hundred  thousand 
years,  for  all  he  gets  by  it  is  to  see  the  same  sights 
so  much  the  oftener."  It  is  the  unhappiness 
of  some  men  at  this  period  to  find  in  Nature's 


WESTWARD  OP  FIFTY.  73 

freshest  products  nothing  new  or  inspiring. 
Goethe,  in  one  of  his  autobiographical  notes, 
remarks  of  a  contemporary  that  "  he  saw  with 
vexation  the  green  of  spring  and  wished  that 
by  way  of  change  it  might  once  appear  red." 
The  German  would  have  found  a  sympathiser  in 
our  "Walter  Pater  who,  it  is  recorded,  regarded 
it  as  an  annual  affliction  to  have  to  "  look  upon 
the  raw  greens  of  spring." 

But  there  is  even  worse  than  this.  Some 
physiologists  and  some  psychologists  have  not 
hesitated  to  maintain  that  there  is  a  decay  of 
moral  enthusiasm  in  life's  after  period  which 
renders  the  average  man  after  middle  age  less 
ethically  valuable.  And  any  one  wishing  to 
maintain  this  thesis  need  not  lack  evidence. 
History  is  full  of  stories  of  a  youth  of  high 
moral  promise  dashed  by  the  later  years.  Had 
Henry  VIII.  died  young  he  would  have  appeared 
in  our  annals  as  a  hero  instead  of  a  monster. 
Nero,  when  the  pupil  of  Seneca,  had  excellent 
inspirations.  In  reading  Plutarch's  life  of 
Alexander  one  is  struck  with  his  deterioration 
of  character,  from  the  earlier  warmth  and 
generosity  to  that  later  caprice  and  cruelty 
which  showed  in  his  alienation  from  Aristotle, 
and  in  the  murder  of  his  old  friends  Clitus  and 


74          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Parmenio.  The  "  religious  rogue  "  of  modern 
times  is  commonly  a  man  who  unscrupulously 
exploits  the  confidence  secured  to  him  by  a 
profession  which  in  his  earlier  days  had 
sincerity  behind  it.  The  inner  deterioration 
experienced  by  some  men  in  their  later  life 
was  expressed  in  somewhat  startling  fashion  to 
the  present  writer,  years  ago,  by  a  noted 
minister  of  religion  of  his  day.  "It  is  you 
young  men,"  said  he,  "  who  must  start  the  new 
ventures.  It  is  no  use  looking  to  us  old  fellows, 
who  believe  in  nothing  and  nobody !  " 

All  this  is  evidence  of  something  being 
seriously  wrong  somewhere.  To  declare  half 
of  our  life  to  be  necessarily  a  failure  is  to 
bring  an  indictment  against  life  altogether. 
As  it  stands,  the  indictment  suggests  one  of 
two  alternatives.  Either  the  order  of  the 
universe  which  ordains  old  age  is  faulty,  or 
the  failure  lies  in  our  interpretation  of,  and 
obedience  to,  that  order.  The  matter  is  not 
cleared,  but  still  further  complicated  by  a 
Church  teaching,  for  centuries  in  vogue,  which 
has  depreciated  the  present  earthly  life,  with 
its  old  age  included,  in  favour  of  a  future  life 
elsewhere.  It  is  astonishing  that  Christian 
teachers  have  not  more  generally  seen  the 


WESTWARD  OP  FIFTY.  75 

falseness  of  this  view.  To  put  the  "  now  "  and 
"  here "  of  earth  in  such  complete  opposition 
to  the  "  then "  and  "  there "  of  heaven  is 
to  endeavour  to  extract  from  time  and  place 
what  they  were  never  intended  to  yield.  If 
the  life  in  God,  the  satisfying  life  as  revealed 
in  and  by  Christ,  cannot  be  lived  here  and 
now,  it  can  be  lived  nowhere  and  nowhen. 

We  come  back,  then,  to  our  opening  sugges- 
tion, in  which  the  view  of  life  as  a  probation 
is  taken  in  the  sense  that  the  after  part  reaps 
what  the  earlier  part  has  sown.  The  failure, 
where  failure  there  is,  lies  not  in  the  game,  but 
in  our  way  of  playing  it.  Properly  understood 
and  followed,  the  human  career,  if  we  interpret 
it  rightly,  should  to  its  very  end  be  full  of 
freshness  and  benediction.  The  whole  business 
resolves  itself  into  the  question  whether  life's 
after  part  is  to  be  considered  by  us  as  a  decline 
or  as  part  of  a  growth.  To  point  to  physical 
and  even  to  some  aspects  of  mental  deterioration 
as  evidence  that  it  is  a  decay  is,  be  it  here  ob- 
served, quite  beside  the  mark.  Decay  is  always 
going  on  somewhere,  in  every  part  of  the 
career.  The  foetus  life  in  some  of  its  aspects 
perishes  when  the  child  is  born.  Infancy  and 
adolescence  have  severally  their  growth,  cul- 


76  OUESELVES  AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

mination  and  ending  as  the  boy  pushes  on  to- 
wards the  man.  The  whole  point  lies  in  what 
we  are  thinking  of  when  we  talk  about  life's 
decline.  If  it  be  physical  powers  and  enjoy- 
ments, or  even  some  forms  of  mentality,  there 
is  no  possible  controversy,  for  no  one  disputes 
the  facts.  Unquestionably  if  this  is  all  man  is 
or  has,  the  pessimists  are  right,  and  his  later 
life  is  a  pitiable  business,  about  which  the  less 
said  the  better. 

But  may  we  not  see  in  Nature's  blunt  exhibi- 
tion of  the  failure  of  this  side  of  old  age — in 
this  thrusting  of  it  in  all  its  nakedness  before 
our  eyes — her  effort  to  awaken  us  to  a  deeper 
conception  ?  It  is,  indeed,  only  in  the  light  of 
that  conception  that  it  becomes  to  us  at  all 
intelligible.  But  in  that  light  everything 
assumes  a  new  aspect.  Man  appears  to  us  at 
this  period  as  a  being  full  of  desires  and  thirsts 
which  the  world  he  has  passed  through  no 
longer  attempts  to  satisfy,  to  which  the  organs 
of  sense  fail  to  respond,  for  which  nothing  that 
is  of  the  seen  or  of  the  flesh  is  an  answer. 
This  unquenched  desire,  if  it  be  not  a  mockery, 
is  surely  for  him  the  greatest  of  prophecies. 
Naked  indeed  is  he,  if  there  be  not  an  invisible 
with  which  he  is  being  clothed  upon  !  Dying 


WESTWARD  OP  FIFTY.  77 

also,  but  if  he  be  awake  to  the  proper  signifi- 
cance of  himself,  he  will  realise  now  that  what 
in  him  is  dying  is  no  more  his  truest  and  deep- 
est than  was  the  passing  away  in  him  of  the 
child  when  he  became  a  man. 

It  is  well  to  persuade  ourselves,  and  the 
sooner  in  life  the  better,  that  there  is  no  possi- 
ble way  of  making  our  "  after  middle  age  "  a 
success  except  this  one  of  accepting  ourselves 
as  in  this  world  mainly  and  ultimately  for 
spiritual  growth.  It  is  this  only  which  will 
save  that  after  period  from  monotony.  And  it 
does  save  it  most  effectually.  Aurelius  is 
wrong  here.  We  do  not  see  the  same  show  over 
again.  As  our  inner  nature  opens  our  world 
becomes  ever  more  beautiful,  more  mystically 
inspired.  If  each  new  spring  does  not  bring  us 
a  deeper  message  it  is  because  we  have  been 
neglecting  our  inner  life.  To  the  growing  soul 
the  world  is  ever  miraculously  renewing  itself. 
Our  fellow-men  grow  always  dearer  to  us, 
always  more  interesting.  And  how  much  more 
interesting  does  God  become ! 

It  is  this  principle  alone,  too,  which  preserves 
from  age's  otherwise  inevitable  moral  wastage. 
If  we  do  not  take  faith's  leap  and  "  catch  on  " 
to  life's  higher  order  we  shall  certainly  develop 


78          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  "  moral  wrinkles "  of  which  Montaigne 
speaks.  But  let  no  one  believe  in  any  psycho- 
logical necessity  here.  Paul  and  Augustine, 
John  Wesley  and  Catherine  Booth  did  not 
grow  worse  as  they  grew  older;  they  grew 
better ;  they  ripened.  And  when  with  some  of 
these,  a  period  has  been  reached  in  which  the 
desire  to  remain  longer  in  the  world  has  visibly 
lessened,  this  means,  not  a  diminishing  of  in- 
terest in  life,  but  a  preparedness  for  the  next 
evolution  of  it. 

As  years  assist 
Which  wear  the  thickness  thin,  and  let  man  see, 

such  spirits  gain  so  ravishing  a  sense  of  that 
"  life  beyond  the  bridge  "  that  they  long  to  join 
themselves  unto  it. 


IX. 
The  Art  of  Happiness. 

IT  is  something,  as  a  start  in  the  world,  to  be 
convinced  on  good  grounds  that  the  Ordainer 
of  our  life  on  this  planet  intended  joy  as  one  of 
its  chief  products.  That  it  means  other  things 
— service,  sacrifice,  education,  development, 
probation,  as  well  as  a  thousand  aims  beyond 
our  ken — we  may  well  believe.  But  one  of  its 
governing  designs  is  the  joy  of  living.  If  there 
is  proof  of  anything  there  is  proof  of  that.  It 
peeps  out  of  every  detail  of  the  scheme.  The 
material  for  enjoyment  is  so  inwrought  into  the 
world's  constitution  that  we  cannot  put  a  spade 
into  the  ground  anywhere  without  turning  it 
up.  Men  reach  joy  by  the  most  diverse  roads. 
By  travel,  by  staying  at  home  ;  by  working,  by 
resting ;  by  strain  of  the  muscle  or  strain  of 
the  mind;  by  speech,  by  silence;  by  solitude, 
by  society;  by  helping,  by  being  helped;  by 
receiving,  by  giving.  One  could  go,  indeed, 
through  almost  every  process  of  life  and  find  a 


80          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

pleasure  as  its  result.  We  enjoy  as  we  eat  and 
drink,  as  we  open  our  eyes  upon  the  world,  as 
we  swing  our  limbs  in  the  walk  down  the  road. 
If  we  ask  why  it  is  that  a  rose  should  ravish  us 
with  its  perfume  and  feed  our  artistic  sense 
with  its  beauty  of  form ;  that  the  fresh  breeze 
should  be  a  delight  and  not  a  pain  to  breathe ; 
that  the  vision  of  a  countryside  makes  the 
heart  leap  within  us — there  seems  only  one 
answer.  The  outer  has  been  fitted  to  our  inner 
with  a  direct  view  to  these  results.  Human 
delight,  and  not  human  only  but  that  of  all 
living  creatures,  is  one  at  least  of  the  world's 
ultimate  ends. 

The  happiness  idea,  while  so  deeply  inter- 
fused into  the  constitution  of  nature,  is  seated 
even  more  deeply  in  the  heart  of  man.  It  is 
touching,  and  at  the  same  time  most  suggestive, 
to  see  how  youth  always  and  everywhere  believes 
in  it.  An  Amiel,  when  he  is  forty,  may  talk  of 
hopes  disappointed  and  of  the  future  as  a 
dreary  prospect,  but  not  even  an  Amiel  can  do 
that  at  twenty.  That  primal  instinct  for  happi- 
ness, reborn  in  each  generation,  means  much. 
It  is  not  only  a  thirst  but  a  promise.  What  is 
in  humanity  first  as  a  desire  comes  out 
eventually  as  a  result,  Man  believes  in  joy 


THE  AET  OF  HAPPINESS.  81 

even  when  he  is  sorrowing.  "  Est  qusedam  flere 
voluptas  "  (There  is  a  certain  pleasure  even  in 
weeping),  said  a  master  of  the  science  of  human 
nature.  Even  when  nursing  their  spleen  people 
are,  in  a  way,  enjoying  themselves.  When 
Burton  sings, 

All  my  joys  to  this  are  folly, 
Nought  so  sweet  as  melancholy, 

he  is  simply  indicating  one  of  those  strange 
involutions  of  the  human  spirit  by  which  it 
tastes  a  happiness  in  what  seems  its  opposite. 

But  the  happiness  material,  as  we  have  said, 
requires  extracting,  and  for  this  there  are  some 
rules.  One  might  call  them  simple  were  it  not 
that  such  multitudes  of  clever  people  fail  in 
applying  them.  It  is  indeed  the  cleverness, 
apart  from  wisdom,  that  has  so  often  sophisti- 
cated man  out  of  his  joy.  In  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  where  he  is  miserable  it  is  because  he  has 
allowed  his  imagination  to  play  tricks  with  him. 
It  has,  for  one  thing,  darkened  his  world  with 
false  religions  and  malignant  demons.  Strange, 
that  in  a  universe  which  smiled  so  kindly  on 
him  he  could  have  imagined  an  Enthroned 
Cruelty  as  its  author.  The  perversity  seems 
the  greater  when  we  find  ethnology  digging  up 

6 


82          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

from  all  parts  of  the  globe  evidence  of  a  primi- 
tive tradition  which,  amidst  the  most  savage 
tribes,  recognised  the  Creator  as  righteous  and 
beneficent.  Stranger  still  that  this  perverse 
rendering  should  have  been  permitted  to  distort 
even  the  Christian  Gospel,  and  to  make,  even 
in  our  day,  its  life-scheme  so  forbidding  that  a 
divine  of  the  last  generation  could  suggest  it  as 
an  improvement  that  the  whole  human  race 
should  die  off  at  the  age  of  four  years  !  When 
Athenagoras,  the  Greek  Father,  argued  that  the 
heathens'  practice  of  self-torture  to  propitiate 
their  divinities  was  evidence  of  the  false  origin 
of  their  religion,  he  could  hardly  have  antici- 
pated that  Christianity  itself  was  to  produce  a 
similar  teaching,  and  on  the  largest  scale.  Yet 
so  it  is,  and  as  a  result  men  have  to  be  retaught 
their  inheritance;  to  learn  over  again  their  right 
to  the  natural  human  joys ;  to  cease  to  tremble 
as  they  sit  at  life's  feast.  They  have  not  even 
yet  full  confidence  that  to  really  enjoy  it  is  to 
please  God  and  not  to  anger  Him. 

It  is  not  enough,  however,  for  happiness  to 
have  got  rid  of  these  spectres  of  the  dark.  The 
soul  must  in  some  positive  directions  be  trained 
to  enjoy.  It  must,  for  one  thing,  learn  to  be 
simple.  The  art  of  being  happy  is  the  art  of 


THE  ART  OP  HAPPINESS.  83 

discovering  the  depths  that  lie  in  the  daily 
common  things.  Delight  in  the  simple  is  the 
finest  result  of  culture.  The  animal  exhilara- 
tion which  the  child  has  in  exercise  and  the 
fresh  air  and  the  sense  of  life  becomes  in  the 
trained  soul  a  so  much  deeper,  subtler  thing. 
It  ravishes  with  a  sense  of  something  behind. 
One  is  intoxicated  with  the  feeling  which  a 
modern  mystic  has  expressed  when  he  says,  "  I 
see,  smell,  taste,  hear,  feel  that  Everlasting 
Something  to  which  we  are  allied,  at  once  our 
Maker,  our  abode,  our  destiny,  our  very  selves.'* 
This  training  is,  we  say,  a  training  in  simplicity. 
It  indisposes  us  to  rush  after  the  extraordinary, 
the  so-called  magnificences  of  life.  It  leads  us 
more  and  more  in  the  way  of  the  common,  and 
to  the  deeper  appreciation  of  what  is  there.  It 
sets  us  longing  not  so  much  for  the  sensation 
of  the  millionaire  as  he  shows  his  new  palace, 
as  for  that  of  a  Wordsworth,  or  a  Kuskin,  as, 
on  a  spring  morning,  they  contemplate  a  green- 
ing tree.  This  delight  has  its  guaranteed 
security  in  the  fact  that  the  materials  for  it— 
the  common  things  that,  looked  into,  transform 
themselves  into  heavenly  wonders  and  mysteries 
—are  here  all  around  us,  filling  every  inch  of 
space  and  every  moment  of  time.  The  man  of 


84          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

simple  mind,  of  purged  eye  and  pure  heart, 
walks  daily  wrapt  in  the  consciousness  of  being 
in  the  midst  of  a  universe  divinely  beautiful, 
and  which  is  all  his. 

It  is  another  facet  of  the  same  idea  to  say 
that  the  secret  of  the  joy  of  living  is  the  proper 
appreciation  of  what  we  actually  possess.  That 
kingdom  of  the  unpossessed  for  which  we  so 
foolishly  thirst  is  not  half  so  good  as  this  of 
what  we  have.  A  child  sobs  with  grief  over 
the  toy  that  is  broken,  and  is  not  comforted  by 
the  thought  of  all  its  glorious  assets  of  youth, 
and  health  and  coming  years.  It  has  not  got 
the  thought.  We  who  are  older  are  often  hardly 
wiser.  Coningsby,  in  Disraeli's  novel,  when 
bemoaning  the  loss  of  a  fortune,  is  asked  by  his 
friend  to  remember  that  he  has  still  left  him 
the  use  of  his  limbs.  It  is  an  excellent  sug- 
gestion, and  to  be  taken  in  all  seriousness.  In 
our  moments  of  spleen  there  is  no  better 
exercise  than  to  reckon  up  as  against  our 
losses  the  things  that  remain.  When  we  have 
fairly  understood  the  worth  of  our  personal 
gifts ;  what  it  means  to  be  able  to  swing  along 
in  careless  freedom  of  limb,  to  open  clear  eyes 
upon  the  world's  beauty,  to  eat  with  appetite, 
to  reason,  to  remember,  to  imagine,  instead  of 


THE  ART  OP  HAPPINESS.  85 

being  reduced  to  the  privation  of  these  things, 
we  find  we  are  rich  where  we  thought  ourselves 
poor.  The  worst  is  where  we  lightly  value  our 
wealth  in  love.  Multitudes  of  us  are  fuming 
in  a  false  sense  of  poverty  when  close  at  home 
are  faithful  hearts  that,  if  taken  from  us,  as 
they  might  be  next  week,  would  leave  a  void 
that  not  the  wealth  of  Indies  would  fill.  We 
are  only  poor  by  thinking  ourselves  so.  It  is, 
in  fact,  our  perverse  thinking  that  every  day 
makes  fools  of  us. 

As  our  life  studies  proceed  we  discover  the 
infinite  complexities,  the  depths  beneath  deeps, 
that  enter  into  the  happiness  of  a  growing 
soul.  With  increasing  capacity  it  strikes  ever 
grander  chords,  uni  1  its  experiences  are,  as  to 
the  surface  pleasures,  what  a  Beethoven  sonata 
is  to  a  ditty  of  the  music-hall.  The  Gospel 
account  of  Jesus  stands  out  here  as  the  typical, 
highest  example.  In  the  beginning  was  the 
exquisite  joy  of  a  pure  heart  in  the  presence  of 
nature,  when  the  flowers  and  the  birds  pro- 
claimed the  goodness  of  the  Father.  At  the 
end  this  soul,  ever  learning  and  growing,  had 
reached  a  capacity  such  that  the  Cross,  striking 
full  upon  it,  evoked  only  a  deeper  harmony. 
The  joy  which,  at  the  Supper,  Jesus  offered  His 


86          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

disciples,  was  richer  than  that  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  And  this  marvel  has  continued. 
Men  have  learned  from  Christ  how  to  find  joy 
in  pain ;  how  to  be  happy  when  suffering  and 
dying.  It  was  not  vain  boasting  nor  an  unreal 
idealisation,  but  the  statement  of  plain  facts 
when  Minutius  Felix,  speaking  of  the  martyrs 
of  his  time,  could  say,  "  God's  soldier  is  neither 
forsaken  in  suffering  nor  brought  to  an  end  by 
death.  Boys  and  young  women  among  us 
treat  with  contempt  crosses  and  tortures,  wild 
beasts  and  all  the  bugbears  of  punishment, 
with  the  inspired  patience  of  suffering."  In 
our  own  day  we  read  of  Bushnell  that  "  even 
his  dying  was  play  to  him."  Such  histories 
are  the  supreme  proof  that,  to  the  soul  that 
learns,  life  at  what  seems  its  darkest  and  its 
worst,  is  realised  as  infinitely  worth  living. 
Courage,  then,  in  the  gloomy  day.  "  If  winter 
comes  can  spring  be  far  behind  ?  " 

Bo  our  joy  three  parts  pain, 
Strive  and  hold  cheap  the  strain, 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang ;   dare,  never  grudge  the 
throe! 


The  Mission    of  Illusion. 

AMONGST  the  subjects  which  no  Christian 
teacher  of  to-day  can  afford  to  ignore  is  that  of 
illusion  and  the  part  it  plays  in  life  and  religion. 
It  is  a  matter  that  will  not  be  burked,  and  all 
who  in  any  way  stand  for  the  interests  of 
faith  have  to  make  up  their  minds  upon  it.  To 
the  present  generation  it  is  becoming  in- 
creasingly clear  that  many  things  which  it  had 
been  accustomed  to  regard  as  religious  fact  are 
really  not  so,  and  the  revelation  is  one  full  of 
danger  to  the  inner  life  unless  its  actual 
significance  is  fully  explained.  The  Church 
has  been,  in  a  sense,  brought  up  on  illusions,  and 
the  plain  man  who  is  just  becoming  conscious 
of  this,  is  shocked  at  the  discovery.  His  first 
impulse  is  to  cry  "  Treachery  !  "  Religion  has 
betrayed  him;  the  teacher  has  proved  false, 
and  is  therefore  no  longer  to  be  regarded. 
What  he  here  evidently  needs  is  a  doctrine  of 
illusion  which  shall  remove  his  misapprehen- 


88          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

sions  and  put  him  at  his  ease  in  the  new  situa- 
tion. He  has  to  learn  that,  as  the  French 
Joubert  tersely  puts  it,  "  Illusions  come  from 
heaven,  errors  come  from  ourselves."  In  other 
words,  the  existence  of  illusion  in  life  and 
religion,  is  no  betrayal,  but  one  of  the  Divine 
ordinances  for  the  education  of  humanity.  It 
works  by  ascertainable  laws,  and  its  operations, 
when  understood,  are  seen  to  be  wholly  benefi- 
cent. 

The  law  of  illusion  is  written  broadly  on 
every  department  of  life.  Children  live  in  a 
world  of  make-believe,  and  Nature's  method 
with  the  young  people  here  has  been  her  way 
with  man  as  a  whole.  Truth  is  one  of  her 
goals  for  him,  but  she  is  in  no  hurry  to  get  him 
there.  She  is  content,  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
his  development,  to  fit  him  out  with  rudimen- 
tary and  provisional  ideas,  adequate  to  his 
growth  and  requirements  at  any  given  stage, 
but  to  be  replaced  by  broader  ones  when  the 
time  for  them  comes.  He  lives  at  first  in  a 
fancy  world  where  his  senses  trick  him  at  every 
turn.  They  give  him  what  seem  facts  as  to 
the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the  heavens,  as  to 
the  sun's  motion,  the  blue  of  the  sky,  the 
nature  and  number  of  the  elements,  all  of  which 


THE  MISSION  OP  ILLUSION.  89 

turn  out  afterwards  to  be  illusions.  And  are 
we  sure  even  that  a  large  part  of  the  so-called 
scientific  perception  of  the  universe  of  the 
present  day  will  not,  in  its  turn,  prove  to  be 
illusion  ?  At  best  our  theories  are  a  series  of 
working  hypotheses  which  may  turn  out  to  be 
quite  incorrectly  based.  We  are,  for  instance, 
resting  everything  on  an  atomic  theory,  without 
knowing  anything  as  to  the  interior  nature  of 
the  atom,  or  how  it  came  to  be  there  at  all.  And 
when  our  knowledge  has  reached  its  utmost 
bound  it  will,  after  all,  be  an  affair  only  of  our 
particular  perceptive  faculties.  We  shall,  as 
Fichte  says,  go  on  always  making  our  own 
world.  We  can  say  nothing  as  to  ultimate 
existence  except  that,  as  Spinoza  has  put  it, 
"  things  must  exist,  not  only  in  the  manner  in 
which  they  are  manifested  to  us,  but  in  every 
manner  which  infinite  understanding  can 
conceive." 

With  illusion  playing  this  part  in  the 
broadest  realms  of  life  it  would  be  surprising 
if  its  law  should  be  abrogated  in  any  one 
sphere  of  it,  such  as  that  of  religion.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  find  it  in  full  play  there,  and 
it  is  high  time  that  we  gave  to  its  operations 
the  recognition  they  demand.  The  successive 


90          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

cults  of  fetichisin,  of  star  worship  and  of 
polytheism,  by  which  man  arrived  ultimately  at 
monotheism,  have  been  the  differing  vessels 
which  in  turn  have  held  the  treasure  of  his 
growing  spiritual  life.  When  these  prepara- 
tory ideas  had  served  their  turn,  the  force 
which  developed  them  provided  for  their  decay. 
The  soul,  like  the  body,  has  an  apparatus  of 
decay  which  works  as  surely  as  its  apparatus 
of  growth.  By  a  process  which  nothing  can  stop 
it  separates,  excretes  and  rids  itself  of,  every 
element  that  has  ceased  to  be  of  use.  The 
efforts  of  a  Julian  to  resuscitate  the  Roman 
paganism  were  powerless,  though  he  had  the 
force  of  an  Empire  at  his  back.  Paganism 
passed  because  its  hour  had  come. 

Theology  has  been  excessively  reluctant  to 
admit  the  working  of  this  law  in  the  Church, 
but  the  fact  of  it  can  no  longer  be  denied. 
What  we  now  discover  is  that  the  Christian 
consciousness  that  forms  the  Church's  life  has 
had  successive  coatings  of  ideas  which  it 
perpetually  outgrows  and  casts  aside.  The 
reservoir  of  living  water  has  had  the  roughest 
material  for  its  embankment.  The  early 
Church  was  cradled  in  illusions.  Whether  it 
looked  before  or  behind  it  met  the  mirage.  It 


THE  MISSION  OP  ILLUSION.  91 

looked  behind  to  a  view  of  the  Old  Testament 
which  we  now  smile  at.  Many  of  the  Fathers 
readily  accept  the  view  that  Ezra  miraculously 
restored  the  books  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
that  had  been  lost  during  the  exile,  as  well  as 
the  story  of  the  miracle  by  which,  in  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Septuagint,  the  seventy  elders, 
shut  up  in  separate  cells,  wrote  each  one  of 
them  exactly  the  same  words.  In  its  forward 
look  the  first  Christian  community  had  a 
similar  experience.  It  is  pathetic  for  us,  as 
we  gaze  back  from  our  far-off  standpoint,  to 
observe  the  absolute  confidence  of  those  early 
forecasts  and  the  way  in  which  events  have 
contradicted  them;  to  see  how,  in  succession, 
now  a  Justin  Martyr,  now  an  Irenaeus,  now 
a  Tertullian  and  a  Cyprian,  and  anon  a 
Jerome  and  an  Augustine,  find  in  the  state  of 
the  world  around  them  the  sure  signs  of  the 
Advent  and  the  world's  end.  In  all  this  they 
were  wrong ;  but  what  then  ?  Was  their 
religion  one  whit  less  centrally  true  or  Divine 
because  contained  in  this  framework  of  primi- 
tive ideas  ?  Their  religion  was  not  in  that 
framework,  but  in  the  fact  that  the  love  of 
Christ  constrained  them  ;  that  their  hearts 
had  been  filled  by  Him  with  the  passion  for 


92          OURSELVES  AtfD  THE 


holiness;  that  His  infinite  pity  for  all  who 
suffered  and  were  needy  wrought  in  them. 
Here  was  the  evidence  both  of  its  truth  and  of 
its  divinity.  The  evolution  of  its  ideas  could 
in  the  meantime  take  care  of  itself. 

To-day  we  have  to  recognise  that  a  certain 
portion  of  the  Church  creeds  were  wrought  in 
an  atmosphere  of  illusion.  They  were  con- 
structed to  the  scale  of  a  pettier  universe  than 
that  to  which  we  now  know  ourselves  to 
belong.  The  creeds  are,  for  one  thing, 
geocentric.  They  conceive  the  earth  as 
central,  with  heaven  and  hell  as  adjunct 
and  completion.  They  are  unreal  to  a  view 
which  regards  our  planet  as  a  dust  speck  in 
the  infinity  of  the  worlds. 

At  contra  nusquam  apparent  Acberusia  templa. 

Jacob's  ladder  no  longer  reaches  to  the  sky. 
The  heavens  have  removed  far  off  and  become 
astronomical.  In  short,  the  concepts  which 
presided  over  the  Church  creeds  represent,  in 
the  language  of  a  recent  writer,  "  undeveloped 
science,  imperfect  philosophy  and  perverted 
notions  of  history."  They  will  have  to  be 
revised.  Their  view  of  Christianity  is  steadily 
giving  way  in  the  minds  of  men  to  one  more  in 


THE  MISSION  OF  ILLUSION,  93 

accord  with  the  laws  that  govern  the  outside 
universe  and  the  evolution  of  the  human  soul. 
What  then  ?  Will  this  march  away  from 
the  earlier  illusions  lead  Christian  people  to  a 
barer  pasturage  for  the  spirit  ?  Will  their 
religion  be  poorer  for  the  change  in  some 
of  its  surrounding  ideas  ?  The  previous 
history  of  the  human  movement  should  be 
enough  to  reassure  us  on  this  point.  What 
man  has  found  hitherto  is  that  the  new 
reality  which  he  reaches  is  always  greater  and 
more  satisfying  than  the  old  illusion  which  it 
displaces.  The  tiny  Cosmos  of  the  ancients 
was  not  to  be  compared  in  grandeur  with  that 
which  modern  astronomy  and  geology  have  dis- 
closed. And  if  this  be  so  with  the  external 
world  the  whole  analogy  of  things  suggests 
that  in  like  manner  will  it  be  with  the  inner 
and  spiritual  world.  We  shall  not  go  forward 
in  every  other  department  to  go  backward 
here.  The  new  concepts  which,  in  our  escape 
from  earlier  illusions,  we  are  gaining  as  to  the 
origin  and  nature  of  Christianity  will  be  more 
sublime  and  more  religiously  effective  than 
those  earlier  ones,  as  they  will  offer  an  exacter 
and  more  satisfying  relation  to  life's  infinite 
whole.  We  shall  advance,  as  Goethe  says, 


94         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

"  from  a  Christianity  of  words  to  a  Christianity 
of  feeling  and  action."  And  as  the  investiga- 
tions of  science  disclose  to  us  an  external  nature 
which  becomes  more  and  more  immeasurable 
to  the  view,  so  the  sense  of  religion  as  it 
develops  will  reveal  ever  wider  spheres  in 
which  love  and  faith  and  holiness  may  grow 
and  expatiate. 

There  is  another  side  of  the  mission  of 
illusion  which  we  can  none  of  us  afford  to 
ignore.  It  is  that  of  its  relation  to  our 
personal  life.  Illusion  is  the  charm  and 
poetry  of  the  soul,  as  well  as  one  of  its 
most  effective  inspirations.  Children  live  in 
its  enchanted  realm,  and  if  we  are  wise,  we 
who  are  older  will  often  take  up  our  abode 
there,  too.  It  is  a  trick  of  the  present 
writer,  of  which  he  is  willing  to  make  a 
present  to  his  readers,  when  at  a  concert  where 
the  highest  music  is  provided,  to  enhance  the 
enjoyment  by  the  simple  process  of  shutting 
his  eyes  and  imagining  himself  in  his  own 
room,  and  this  glorious  feast  to  be  an  im- 
promptu serenade  under  his  windows.  By 
getting  rid,  in  this  way,  of  the  claims  of  ex- 
pectation, and  allowing  everything  to  come  as 
a  surprise,  one  has  doubled  the  delight.  It  is 


THE  MISSION  OF  ILLUSION.  95 

by  illusion  also  that  Nature  gets  her  biggest 
things  out  of  us.  Young  men  set  off  on  hardy 
adventures  of  campaign  or  of  travel  with  an 
idea  of  accompanying  pleasure  or  profit  which 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  will  not  be  realised. 
But  they  will  have  done  something  for  their 
own  and  the  world's  furtherance,  which 
otherwise  would  not  have  been  done.  A 
lad's  notion  of  his  own  powers,  and  of  his 
future,  is  half  illusion.  But  what  power 
he  does  exercise,  and  what  future  he  will 
secure,  are  owing  largely  to  that  illusion. 
Under  this  rainbow  arch  men  and  women 
walk  together  to  marriage  and  the  found- 
ing of  homes.  Nature  smiles  at  their  ideas 
while  securing,  at  their  expense,  the  harvest 
of  her  own. 

Yet  is  her  smile,  while  carrying  in  it  a  trace 
of  irony,  ever  benevolent.  From  passion's 
illusion,  by  which  hearts  seem  often  so  cruelly 
beguiled,  come  results  better  than  the  dream, 
though  so  different  from  it.  The  family  life, 
consisting  often  of  hard  enough  realities,  will 
leave  higher  effects  upon  character  than  the 
sentimental  raptures  which  preceded  it.  And 
its  disappointments  and  sorrows  show  illusion 
as  one  of  the  great  training  forces  of  the 


96         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

human  spirit.  It  is  by  the  contrast  here 
forced  on  us  between  earth's  promises  and 
their  fulfilment  that  it  urges  on  the  soul, 
as  by  an  inner  necessity,  to  seek  finally 
its  peace  in  those  imperishables  which  do 
not  betray. 


XI. 
The   Soul's    Voice. 

ONE  of  the  greatest  events  in  the  history  of 
this  planet  was  the  beginning  upon  it  of  arti- 
culate speech.     Evolution  has,  as  yet,  attained 
no  greater  triumph  than   in   this  discovery  of 
soul  to  soul  by  the  fitting  of  thought  to  sound. 
How  it  came  about    we   know    not,    though 
science  is  ever  groping  towards  some  answer  to 
the  problem.     Animals,  we  know,   have  their 
signal  codes.     In  Africa  lions  hunt  in  concert 
and  send  message  notes  to  each  other  as  they 
tighten  their  cordon   round  the   game.     The 
chatter  of  apes  is  being  spoken  of  as  a  rudi- 
mentary language,  and  attempts  even  are  being 
made  to  translate  it.     Human   speech   began 
probably  in  similar    humble  fashion,    but  its 
destinies  were  magnificent.     In  the  process  of 
its  development  we  cannot  say  what  was  the 
order  of  co-operation,  how  far  the  struggling 
soul  shaped  its  organ  of  expression,  or  how  the 
perfecting  of  the  organ  gave  new  capacity  to 

7 


98          OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  soul.  May  be  that  our  poet  Spenser  is 
mainly  right  in  his  Platonic  affirmation, 

Of  soule  the  bodie  forrae  doth  take, 

For  soule  is  form  and  doth  the  bodie  make. 

But  how  the  mere  effort  of  the  inner  life 
wrought  to  the  shaping  and  refining  of  the 
vocal  machinery  up  to  the  present  range  and 
delicacy  is  as  great  a  mystery  as  is  that  of  its 
present  use.  Have  we  ever  properly  considered 
this  latter  mystery ;  of  how  at  any  moment  our 
intellect,  our  emotions,  our  will  establish  them- 
selves at  our  vocal  chords  and,  without  the 
slightest  hesitation,  strike  the  exact  combina- 
tion of  them  they  want,  and  set  them  vibrat- 
ing to  precisely  the  needed  pitch;  and  how 
thus  the  complex  of  our  inmost  soul,  made  into 
a  sound,  discharges  in  this  fashion  its  full  con- 
tent into  another  soul  ? 

Questions  of  this  sort  meet  us  at  the  threshold 
of  our  topic,  but  it  is  not  on  their  account  that 
we  have  introduced  it.  There  are  matters  con- 
nected with  the  soul's  voice  that  touch  us  more 
nearly  than  do  the  purely  scientific  problems 
connected  with  it.  How  closely  the  voice  and 
that  realm  of  harmony  to  which  it  is  related  lie 
to  the  innermost  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual 


THE  SOUL'S  VOICE.  99 

life  was  a  point  very  early  discerned.  Plato 
exhibits  its  full  significance  when  in  the 
"  Republic  "  he  speaks  of  rhythm  and  harmony 
as  entering  into  the  deepest  parts  of  the  soul, 
and  declares  that  "by  the  educated  sense  of 
harmony  we  learn  to  discern  between  the  good 
and  the  base,  the  ugly  and  the  beautiful  in  all 
things."  Euskin  endorses  the  doctrine  when 
he  reminds  us  that  "  all  the  greatest  music  is 
by  the  human  voice,"  and  that  "with  the 
Greeks  the  God  of  music  was  also  the  God  of 
righteousness." 

It  is  worth  trying  to  discover  what  precisely 
these  ideas  amount  to.  That  which  Plato,  in 
his  doctrine  of  music,  seems  mainly  to  convey 
was  that  rhythm  and  harmony  of  sound,  how- 
ever produced,  have  a  marvellous  parallel  with 
man's  inner  states ;  that  music,  like  the  soul, 
can  be  gay,  frivolous,  wrathful;  or  solemn, 
serene,  ecstatic ;  that  man's  heights  and  depths, 
his  greatness  and  his  littleness,  can  be  inter- 
preted for  him  and  realised  in  him  through 
sound.  But  there  is  more  than  that.  The 
relation  of  sound  to  our  deepest  life  is  not  fairly 
got  at  till  we  study  a  certain  phenomenon  in 
speech,  not  too  often  met  with,  but  which, 
where  it  is,  leaves  ever  its  own  unmistakable 


100  OuBSELVES    AND    TflE 


impression.  When  we  have  discussed  the 
quality  of  a  voice  as  tested  by  the  usual 
standards  ;  when  its  powers  have  been  registered 
by  the  singer,  the  elocutionist,  or  the  actor, 
has  all  been  said?  The  range  they  cover  is 
immense,  but  there  is  an  element  of  voice 
possibility  which  they  have  not  touched  and 
never  can.  It  is  the  element,  unique  and 
indefinable,  that  is  furnished  by  the  size  and 
the  stirring  of  the  soul  behind. 

It  is  not  in  life's  ordinary  intercourse  that  we 
catch  this  note.  The  voice  is  employed  for  the 
most  part  in  doing  the  mind's  hack  work.  It 
retails  the  news,  discusses  questions  of  fact  or 
of  logic,  expresses  in  its  different  registers  the 
usual  day-by-day  emotions,  and  all  this  without 
any  unlocking  of  its  secret  doors.  But  those 
doors  sometimes  do  open,  and  a  breath  from 
within,  of  something  mysterious,  unearthly, 
passes  into  the  tone.  The  speaker  whose  utter- 
ance is  of  life's  weightier  matters  knows  per- 
fectly the  experience.  At  times  his  voice  has 
handed  out  what  he  had  to  say  mechanically, 
by  a  hard,  pumping  process,  each  sentence,  as 
it  were,  with  a  separate  stroke  of  the  handle  —  • 
so  much  fact,  so  much  argument,  and  there  an 
end.  At  another  time  his  vocal  organs,  utter- 


THE  SOUL'S  VOICE.  101 

ing,  it  may  be,  almost  the  same  words,  are 
thrilling  with  vibrations  from  an  unseen  source ; 
each  note  has  its  myriad  overtones,  spirit  echoes, 
as  it  were,  of  what  is  said.  The  man's  voice  is 
the  instrument  of  a  new  music;  his  soul  is 
speaking,  stirred  in  its  turn  by  an  Oversoul 
mightier  than  itself.  Socrates  was  describing 
this  note  when  he  spoke  of  being,  in  his  words, 
"  moved  by  a  Divine  and  spiritual  influence." 
It  thrilled  at  times  in  the  utterance  of  Newman. 
It  was  this  which  was  felt  in  the  words  of  Keble 
when,  as  Thomas  Mozley  says  of  them,  "  they 
seemed  to  come  from  a  different  and  holier 
sphere."  When  the  Jewish  people  said  of  the 
words  of  Jesus,  "Never  man  spake  like  this 
man,"  the  reference,  we  may  be  sure,  was  not 
merely  to  the  meaning  conveyed.  There  was  the 
impression  also  of  the  unfathomable  soul  that 
uttered  them,  and  that  lived  in  the  tone,  satur- 
ating it  with  its  mystic  essence.  Between  words 
spoken  by  one  man  and  the  same  words  uttered 
by  another,  what  a  gulf !  It  is  the  difference 
in  size  of  the  one  soul  behind  as  compared  with 
that  of  the  other.  All  which  may  be  summed 
up  in  a  word,  to  wit,  that  no  one  has  discovered 
the  capabilities  of  his  voice  till  he  has  dis- 
covered the  capabilities  of  his  soul. 


102        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

It  is  worth  while  reading  history  just  for  the 
purpose  of  discovering  this  magnificent  spiritual 
note  as  it  from  time  to  time  breaks  in  upon  the 
human  concert.  There  are  periods  when  every- 
thing appears  drowned  in  dissipation  and  folly, 
when  human  speech  is  a  mere  chatter,  and  the 
deeper  man  seems  dead.  Suddenly  there  breaks 
upon  the  air  the  indescribable  vibrant  tone.  A 
voice  sounds  through  the  night,  as  the  Latin 
poet  says, "  declaring  immortal  things  in  human 
speech,"  and  the  soul  of  every  man  within 
him  trembles  in  response.  Terrena  ccelestibus 
cedunt.  It  is  felt  that  a  prophetic  word  has 
been  spoken,  that  the  deepest  essence  of  the 
age,  its  whole  inner  burden  of  feeling,  aspira- 
tion and  desire  has  uttered  itself  in  this  cry  and 
has  delivered  therein  its  spiritual  testimony. 
It  was  precisely  in  this  that  Luther,  as  Harnack 
in  his  fine  study  of  him  has  shown,  was  the 
prophet  of  the  Western  world  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  What  filled  his  voice  with  a  power 
beyond  words  was  the  soul  behind,  fired  with  a 
new  consciousness  of  God.  No  man  need  pose 
as  a  prophet  unless  that  tone  is  singing  in  him. 
When  it  is  there  he  is  not  to  be  stopped  though, 
as  the  aforesaid  Dr.  Martin  once  himself  de- 
clared, it  "  should  rain  devils  for  seven  days." 


THE  SOUL'S  VOICE.  103 

Wonderful  and  awe-inspiring  as  are  the 
effects  when  the  soul  comes  thus  into  human 
speech,  uttering  itself  to  the  world,  not  less  so 
are  they  when  the  music  is  wholly  interior, 
meant  for  one  ear  alone.  The  intruding  note 
coming  out  of  the  depths  of  the  spirit  has 
been  enough  many  a  time  to  rend  a  man  in 
twain.  Most  instructive  here  is  that  story,  one 
of  a  thousand  similar  that  might  be  told,  of 
Lacordaire,  the  great  French  preacher.  As  a 
young  advocate  at  the  Bar,  after  a  brilliant 
university  career,  irresistible  in  eloquence  and 
ability,  his  career  assured,  the  world  at  his  feet, 
he  is  found  one  day  by  a  friend  alone  in  his 
room,  sobbing  and  heartbroken.  What  is  the 
matter  with  Lacordaire  ?  This :  that  in  the  midst 
of  his  successes  the  inner  deeps  have  suddenly 
broken  up  and  overwhelmed  his  pleasure-world. 
A  voice  has  spoken  within,  proclaiming  that 
world  a  mockery,  and  himself  a  failure.  "  A 
delusion,"  says  some  one,  "a moment  of  pique." 
But  the  preacher's  whole  career  dated  from  that 
moment.  Paul  had  such  a  time,  and  Augustine, 
and  many  another  who  has  carried,  as  it  seemed, 
a  world's  spiritual  interests  in  his  hands.  As  to 
whether  the  voices  they  heard  were  trustworthy, 
they  were  perhaps  as  good  judges  as  their  critics. 


104        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Domestic  life  is  full  of  histories,  pathetic, 
often  tragic,  of  the  soul's  strange,  long  silences, 
broken  at  last,  and  many  a  time  too  late,  by  a 
cry  from  its  depths.  How  often  happens  it 
that  the  genuine  affection  of  worthy  hearts, 
covered  up  and  concealed  under  a  vexed  surface 
of  irritations  and  misunderstandings,  lies  almost 
unnoted  by  its  possessors  until  the  swift  warning 
of  a  near  parting  wakes  the  soul  to  a  sense  of 
what  it  is  losing,  and  draws  from  it  the  awful 
cry  of  its  anguished  love  !  What  a  lesson  writ 
in  fire  is  that  word  of  Carlyle  on  the  death  of 
his  wife :  "  Oh,  if  only  I  could  have  five  min- 
utes with  her  to  assure  her  that  I  loved  her 
through  all  that !  "  How  well  were  it  here  for 
some  of  us  to  follow  the  example  of  the  worthy 
Siebenkas  in  Jean  Paul  Richter's  story  when, 
concerning  Lenette,  "Every  morning,  every 
evening  he  said  to  himself,  c  How  much  ought  I 
not  to  forgive ;  for  we  shall  remain  so  short  a 
time  together ! '  " 

It  were  indeed  vastly  better  for  us  all  if,  in 
our  intercourse  with  one  another,  we  oftener 
permitted  the  soul  to  speak.  The  surface 
chatter  of  the  present  day  is  in  its  emptiness 
and  unreality  almost  worse  than  that  of  the 
France  of  the  seventeenth  century  which 


THE  SOUL'S  VOICE.  105 

tempted  Pascal  to  exclaim,  "  Diseur  de  bons 
mots,  mauvais  caractere  !  "  If  people  knew  it 
they  could  rule  by  the  voice ;  not  by  its  vehe- 
mence and  clamour,  but  by  the  soul  they  put  into 
it.  Spirit,  which  can  saturate  feature,  can  also 
saturate  sound  with  its  mystic  essence.  A 
domestic  circle  may  be  made  a  paradise  by  the 
music  of  one  low,  sweet  voice.  There  are  tones 
of  spiritual  natures  that  seem  to  visualise  holi- 
ness, under  whose  pleading  an  erring  man  has 
been  as  the  fallen  archangel  at  the  reproof  of 
Zephon : 

And  felt  how  awful  goodness  is,  and  saw 
Virtue  in  her  shape  how  lovely ;  saw  and  pined 
His  loss. 

The  note  we  have  been  seeking  to  fix  and  to 
describe  is  indeed  a  voice  from  heaven,  and  to 
hear  it,  as  at  times  we  do,  is  to  receive  anew  the 
assurance  that  man  is  not  forsaken  of  God.  It 
is  a  note  worth  striving  for  in  human  speech. 
The  elocutionist  cannot  teach  it,  nor  is  it  found 
in  the  whole  scale  commanded  by  the  operatic 
star.  To  cultivate  it  we  must  go  deeper  than 
the  vocal  organs.  Its  seat  is  in  the  soul. 


XII. 
Of  Sex  in   Religion. 

IN  a  study  of  sex  in  religion  it  would  be  open 
to  us  to  follow  one  of  two  different  directions. 
We  might,  regarding  humanity  as  the  subject 
of  religion,  as  operated  upon  mysteriously  by 
its  unseen  spiritual  force,  try  to  analyse  the 
separate  effect  of  this  force  as  working  upon 
the  masculine  or  the  feminine  nature.  Or, 
contrariwise,  taking  religion  in  its  aspect  as  a 
human  product,  we  might  seek  to  trace  in  its 
institutions,  its  theologies  and  its  varied 
activities  the  separate  share  which  each  of 
the  sexes  has  contributed  Along  either  of 
these  ways  some  noteworthy  results  would  be 
obtained  if  they  were  carefully  followed.  The 
differences  between  man  and  woman  stand  out 
in  a  quite  new  aspect  when  seen  under  this 
special  light.  Each  half  of  the  race  gives  out 
its  own  peculiar  note  when  that  element  of  it 
is  touched.  It  is  certain  that  we  shall  not 
properly  understand  either  religion  or  human 


OF  SEX  IN  KELIGION.  107 

nature  until  some  such  inquiry  has  been  made. 
Many  of  the  greatest  mistakes  of  the  past  have 
been  due  to  the  neglect  of  it.  In  the  religious 
reconstruction  of  the  future  the  reparation  of 
that  neglect  will,  if  we  mistake  not,  form  one 
of  the  leading  features. 

Looking  at  religion,  for  a  moment,  as  a  pro- 
duct, one  might  suppose  at  first  sight  that  it 
was  almost  entirely  a  masculine  affair.  It  is 
man  everywhere  who  explores  its  metaphysics, 
who  erects  its  theologies,  who  founds  and 
governs  its  institutions.  Man  is  its  pope, 
priest,  and  prophet;  its  legislator,  preacher, 
and  pastor.  Its  divines  have  all  been  men. 
The  great  world  religions,  originating  in  the 
East,  have  taken  an  entirely  Eastern  view  of 
the  man's  and  the  woman's  part  in  this  supreme 
interest.  In  the  Judaean  decalogue  woman  is 
subordinate  and  ancillary.  Thy  "neighbour's 
wife,"  in  the  command  against  covetousness, 
is  included  in  the  list  of  his  possessions.  The 
Mohammedan  was  indisposed  to  concede  woman 
a  soul  at  all.  In  early  and  mediaeval  Catholicism 
she  is  treated  with  a  courtesy  almost  as  scant. 
In  monkish  literature  she  figures  as  the  tempt- 
ress to  be  fled  from,  the  one  malign  influence 
against  which,  above  all  others,  the  saint  must 


108        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

steel  his  soul.  The  feeling  has  its  appropriate 
expression  in  that  brutal  outburst  of  Tertullian, 
"  Woman,  thou  art  the  gate  of  hell."  In  a 
later  and  more  enlightened  time  we  find  Eras- 
mus demeaning  himself  by  describing  woman 
as  "an  absurd  and  ridiculous  animal,  though 
entertaining  and  pleasant " ;  while  his  con- 
temporary Eabelais  has  no  epithet  too  coarse 
with  which  to  pelt  her.  In  a  later  century  the 
polished  La  Bruyere  thinks  he  has  said  the 
final  word  upon  woman  in  declaring  that  "  the 
greater  part  of  them  have  hardly  principles, 
but  are  guided  by  the  heart,  and  depend  for 
their  morals  on  those  they  love."  From  the 
beginning  woman  has  occupied  no  position  of 
authority  in  the  Church.  Her  voice  has  never 
been  heard  at  a  council,  nor  has  her  pen  ever 
formulated  a  decree.  The  England  of  to-day 
gives  a  curious  illustration  of  the  ecclesiastical 
ban  under  which  she  has  been  placed,  in  the 
status  it  accords  to  the  wives  of  Church  digni- 

O 

taries.  An  archbishop  may  have  social  pre- 
cedence over  a  duke,  while  his  wife  shall  be 
plain  Mrs.  Smith.  It  was  left  for  a  woman  to 
put  the  finishing  touch  on  this  order  of  things 
in  the  remark  of  Queen  Elizabeth  to  the  wife 
of  Archbishop  Parker,  on  being  entertained  at 


OF  SEX  IN  BELIGION.  109 

Lambeth,  "  Madam.  I  may  not  call  you,  and 
mistress  I  am  loth  to  call  you.  I  know  not 
what  to  call  you,  but  yet  I  thank  you  for  your 
good  cheer." 

If  woman  were  of  a  revengeful  disposition 
she  might  easily  console  herself  by  reflecting 
on  the  price  that  man  has  had  to  pay  for  his 
exclusiveness.  He  has,  she  might  reflect, 
assumed  the  right  to  legislate  for  the  Church, 
to  define  its  doctrine,  to  build  up  its  whole 
system  of  thought,  and  a  pretty  mess  he  has 
made  of  it.  His  ecclesiastical  polity  has  split 
the  Church  into  a  thousand  pieces,  while  his 
theology  has  made  religion  hateful  to  multi- 
tudes of  ingenuous  minds.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  the  mother  side  of  humanity  would  never 
have  constructed  the  hell  of  medievalism,  nor 
have  made  it  possible  to  exhibit  as  orthodoxy 
the  notion  of  Aquinas  that  heaven's  pleasure 
would  be  augmented  by  the  view  of  the  tortures 
of  the  lost,  or  that  of  Calvin  of  the  preordained 
damnation  of  the  non-elect.  The  male  eccle- 
siastic, imagining  religion  to  be  an  affair  of  dry 
intellect,  a  formula  to  be  ground  out  of  his 
logic  mill,  succeeded  in  making  it  anti-human. 
He  achieved  the  surprising  feat  of  so  dressing 
up  the  primal  facts  concerning  God  and  the 


110        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

soul  as  to  make  theology  a  nightmare,  and  of 
turning  a  region  of  thought,  which  ought  to 
have  been  man's  highest  inspiration,  into  a 
jumble  of  inconsistencies,  at  once  a  barrier  to 
faith  and  a  stumbling  block  to  the  moral  sense. 
Nothing  has  been  made  clearer  than  that  the 
attempt  to  build  religion  out  of  elements 
purely  masculine  is  a  blunder  for  which  the 
outraged  nature  of  things  will  always  take  a 
full  revenge. 

But  we  are  anticipating,  and,  moreover,  this 
is  not  a  quite  complete  statement  of  the  case. 
We  must  remind  ourselves  of  what  was  sug- 
gested at  the  beginning,  that  it  is  only,  after 
all,  a  surface  view  which  fails  to  recognise 
woman  in  the  history  of  religious  production. 
Man  has  tried  hard  to  shut  her  out  from  this 
sphere,  but,  happily,  he  has  not  fully  succeeded. 
One  feels  a  sort  of  poetical  justice  in  the  fact 
that,  as  Professor  Brinton  points  out,  in  certain 
primitive  tribes  it  was  the  woman  only  and  not 
the  man  who  was  regarded  as  possessing  an 
immortal  soul.  Polytheism,  in  all  its  forms, 
has  vaguely  felt  after  the  truth  of  the  feminine 
element  in  religion  in  distributing  the  celestial 
government  amongst  gods  and  goddesses.  In 
Catholicism  the  deification  of  the  Virgin  Mary 


OF  SEX  IN  RELIGION.  Ill 

may  be  said  to  have  found  its  basis  in  this 
sense  of  the  feminine  element  as  necessary  to 
the  idea  of  Deity.  Renan  puts  it  in  his  own 
daring  fashion  in  the  assertion  that  in  the 
Catholic  system  Mary  has  entered  of  full  right 
into  the  Trinity,  having  displaced  there  the  thin 
and  incomprehensible  idea  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
However  we  may  regard  that  curious  statement, 
this  at  least  may  be  said,  that  the  only  way  of 
accounting  for  the  success  of  a  cult  so  badly 
based  both  in  reason  and  in  history  is  in 
regarding  it  as  the  clumsy  expression  of  the 
human  yearning  after  a  Divine  Motherhood, 
as  combining  with  the  strength  of  the  eternal 
Fatherhood,  at  the  heart  of  the  universe. 

When  we  look  a  little  more  deeply  into  re- 
ligious history  we  shall  be  less  surprised  at 
finding  how,  despite  all  effort  to  the  contrary, 
ideas  traceable  to  woman's  religious  intuition 
have  to  so  considerable  a  degree  found  their 
way  into  the  Church's  thought.  For  behind 
most  of  the  great  teachers  has  stood  a  woman. 
Augustine  owed  himself  to  his  mother  Monica. 
At  the  back  of  Basil  and  of  Gregory  of  Nyssa 
we  discern  the  figure  of  their  sister  Macrina, 
"  who  led  them  both  to  the  faith,  and  stirred 
them  to  their  best  work,"  about  whom  Gregory 


112        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

confesses  that  he  wrote  his  treatise  on  "The 
Soul  and  the  Resurrection "  from  her  in- 
spiration. We  remember  what  Jacqueline  was 
to  Pascal  and  what  Henrietta  was  to  Kenan. 
Let  us  not  forget  either  the  direct  influence 
which,  even  in  the  period  when  masculine 
autocracy  in  religion  was  at  its  height, 
woman  from  time  to  time  contrived  to  exert. 
Each  century  of  the  dark  ages  is  illuminated 
by  some  woman  teacher.  Jerome  celebrates 
for  us  Paula,  the  distinguished  Roman  matron, 
the  great  Hebrew  scholar  to  whom  the  Latin 
father  was  glad  to  refer  difficult  points  in 
his  commentary  on  Ezekiel.  The  eighth 
century  shows  us  those  Benedictine  nuns 
who  did  so  much  to  evangelise  Europe,  the 
workers  under  Boniface,  such  as  Lioba, 
Walburga,  and  Berthgytha,  who  missionised 
Germany,  and  are  reported  as  being  versed  in 
all  the  science  of  the  time.  What  a  figure, 
too,  is  that  of  Hildegarde,  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, whom  Rohrbacher  calls  the  "instructor 
of  the  people,  the  councillor  of  bishops  and 
monarchs,  the  restorer  of  piety  and  manners, 
and  oracle  of  the  Church ;  who  was  among 
women  what  St.  Bernard  was  among  men.'* 
What  might  one  not  say  also  of  a  Catherine  of 


OF  SEX  IN  EELIGIOIT.  113 

Siena,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  the  beloved 
of  the  poor,  and  at  the  same  time  the  feared 
and  obeyed  of  popes ;  or  of  the  Spanish  Teresa, 
of  the  sixteenth,  who  founded  orders,  ad- 
vised kings,  and  -whose  "  Treatise  of  Prayer  " 
is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  of  devotional 
works ! 

As  we  trace  the  feminine  influence  in  religion 
through  the  past  and  observe  its  fuller  expan- 
sion in  our  own  times,  we  realise  more  clearly 
the  dimensions  of  the  blunder  which  for  long 
ages  sought  so  persistently  to  repress  it.  For, 
as  we  now  begin  to  perceive,  it  is  the  woman 
nature  that,  more  intimately  than  the  man's, 
expresses  the  innermost  soul  of  religion.  It  is 
dawning  upon  us  that  those  spheres  of  reason 
and  of  logic  where  man  is  strongest,  and  where 
he  loved  of  old  to  elaborate  his  theologic  sys- 
tems, are  not,  after  all,  the  place  where  we  shall 
find  the  thing  we  are  seeking.  Faith's  true 
seat  is  elsewhere  in  the  soul.  The  statement  of 
a  modern  investigator  that  "science  arises 
from  man's  conscious,  and  religion  from  his 
subconscious  states,"  may  perhaps  be  too  sweep- 
ing a  generalisation,  but  it  points  undoubtedly 
in  the  right  direction.  We  are  understanding 
better  now  Pascal's  profound  remark,  in  its 

8 


114        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEKSE. 

application  to  religion,  that  "  what  is  founded 
only  in  reason  is  very  badly  founded."  It  is  in 
the  region  beyond  reason,  in  the  sphere  of 
intuition,  of  feeling,  of  aspiration,  of  that 
Formless  which  Goethe  declared  to  be  the 
highest  thing  in  man,  that  religion  finds  at 
once  its  perennial  spring  and  its  impregnable 
refuge.  And  it  is  precisely  because  in  these 
regions  woman's  nature  is  at  its  richest  that  we 
are  beginning  to  discover  how  primary  and  how 
essential  is  the  contribution  which  she  makes 
to  it.  It  is  because  along  that  side  of  its 
nature  humanity  most  quickly  and  most  surely 
feels  the  quiver  of  the  Infinite  that  woman 
must  inevitably  in  the  future  be  recognised  as 
arch-priestess  of  religion. 

In  proportion  as  this  element  of  the  supra- 
rational — existing  both  in  man  and  woman,  but 
in  man  so  frequently  deficient — assumes  with- 
out cavil  its  true  place  in  religion,  we  shall  see 
going  on  in  it  a  steady  readjustment  of  values. 
The  bastard  religion  of  dogma,  forged  in  a 
place  which  has  no  proper  apparatus  for  pro- 
ducing it,  will  yield  precedence  to  the  true  reli- 
gion of  faith,  hope  and  love.  The  Church  will 
cease  to  frame  definitions  of  everything  in  the 
universe,  with  anathemas  attached  against  all 


OF  SEX  IN  RELIGION.  115 

who  fail  to  accept  them,  and  will  instead  give 
itself  to  its  proper  work  of  loving,  praying  and 
serving.  It  will  labour  with  all  its  might  to 
understand,  but  it  will  not  again  commit  the 
offence  of  offering  the  world  a  syllogistic  salva- 
tion. It  will  know  God  as  every  mother's  soul 
has  always  known  Him,  and  as  logic  has  never 
known  Him.  It  will  bear  sinners  on  its  heart  as 
mothers  do  their  prodigal  sons.  And  by  this 
means  will  it  arrive  at  and  abide  in  the  true 
orthodoxy,  the  proper  knowledge  of  God.  For 
it  is  because  God's  heart  has  in  its  centre  this 
mother  love  that  He  is  our  God.  It  is  because 
Christ's  life  was  the  expression  of  that  heart 
that  He  is  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 


XIII. 
Of    False   Conscience. 

THE  view  advocated  by  Socrates,  and  by  Plato 
after  him,  which  practically  identified  virtue 
with  knowledge,  has  been  sharply  criticised  and 
can  easily  be  shown  to  be  defective.  But  the 
controversy  has  at  least  helped  us  to  realise 
how  essential  a  factor  is  knowledge  to  all  moral 
progress,  and  how  fatal  an  impediment  to  that 
progress  is  ignorance.  The  saying  of  Dean 
Church,  that  "  it  is  not  enough  to  be  religious, 
but  we  need  to  know  the  kind  of  religion  we 
are  of,"  is  entirely  applicable  here.  It  is  not 
sufficient  to  call  ourselves  conscientious.  The 
point  is  to  discover  the  kind  of  conscience  we 
are  using.  The  habit  in  many  religious 
teachers  of  describing  conscience  as  a  kind  of 
divinity  within  us  whose  judgments  represent 
infallible  moral  truth,  is  an  evidence  of  the 
looseness  of  thinking  which  prevails  in  some 
pulpits.  That  there  is  a  Divine  working  in  the 
human  conscience  is  credible  enough,  but  the 


OF  FALSE  CONSCIENCE.  117 

search  for  it  reveals  to  us  at  once  two  elements 
which  have  to  be  decisively  separated.  One  is 
the  central  light  which  from  the  beginning  has 
been  streaming  upon  humanity ;  the  other  is 
the  human  organ  or  medium  upon  which  that 
light  has  played,  and  which  in  different  ages 
and  races  shows  itself  as  a  development  in  all 
stages  of  imperfection.  The  ray  which  falls 
on  the  lens  is  entirely  pure.  But  the  rough 
and  often  quite  rudimentary  character  of  this 
instrument,  its  imperfect  polishing,  and  the 
foreign  matter  which  inheres  in  its  substance, 
cause  often  the  most  grotesque  and  distorted 
images  to  be  thrown. 

It  is  when  we  have  grasped  this  fact  that 
those  earlier  histories  of  conscientiousness, 
which  form  often  such  unpleasant  and  puzzling 
reading,  become  at  least  intelligible  to  us. 
What  we  find  there  is  really  a  blend  between 
the  religious  impulse  and  grotesquely  false  ideas 
of  the  universe.  When  the  Lacedaemonians 
whipped  boys  to  death  as  an  offering  to  Diana ; 
when  the  mother  of  Xerxes,  as  he  departed  on 
one  of  his  expeditions,  buried  alive  a  number  of 
youths  to  propitiate  the  subterranean  powers  ; 
when  the  Carthaginians  placed  their  little 
children  on  the  red-hot  lap  of  Moloch,  they 


118        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

were  acting  in  the  fear  of  God;  but  their  God 
was  a  bad  God.  Conscientiousness  for  many 
ages  and  amongst  many  peoples  might  be  trans- 
lated as  bad-Godism.  The  cult  is  in  full  vogue 
to-day.  The  present  writer  had  recently  in  his 
hand  a  photograph  of  an  Indian  fakir  with  a 
long,  emaciated  arm  stretched  at  right  angles 
from  the  shoulder.  He  had  conscientiously  held 
it  in  that  position  for  some  thirty  years !  In 
Paris  the  other  day  died  an  old  woman  whose 
body  was  covered  with  scars  and  burns.  She 
had  starved  and  tortured  herself  to  death  in 
the  name  of  religion.  The  fakir  and  the  Paris 
Catholic  belong  outwardly  to  different  faiths. 
They  might  be  bracketed  together  as  devotees 
of  a  divinity  who,  if  he  were  real,  would  have 
to  be  described  as  cruel  and  barbarous ;  whose 
moral  character,  in  fact,  would  not  bear 
inquiry. 

Most  of  us  will  claim  to  be  quite  remote  from 
mental  conditions  of  this  order.  We  have  out- 
grown those  conceptions  in  which  religion,  to 
use  the  terrible  words  of  Lucretius,  "  displayed 
her  head  from  the  heavens,  threatening  mortals 
with  her  hideous  aspect."  We  have  purified 
our  thoughts  of  God,  and  concurrently  have 
raised  the  standards  by  which  we  judge  of 


OF  FALSE  CONSCIENCE.  119 

character  and  conduct.  Very  likely  our  self- 
satisfaction  in  these  respects  may  be  fairly  well 
grounded.  In  the  ordinary  and  well-worn 
tracks,  both  of  religious  thinking  and  practical 
living,  our  conscience  can  be  trusted  to  yield 
results  that  in  comparison  with  those  cited  may 
be  regarded  as  respectable,  and  even  superior. 
And  yet  it  requires  no  very  close  observation, 
even  in  the  circles  nearest  to  us,  to  discover  on 
every  hand  badly  trained,  badly  nourished  con- 
sciences, which,  from  not  having  enough 
intellect  in  their  virtue,  are  playing  false  in  a 
dozen  directions  to  life's  higher  interests. 

There  is  an  aberration  of  conscience  which 
rules  specially  in  religious  natures,  the  subtle 
working  of  which  has,  so  far  as  we  know,  never 
yet  been  fairly  analysed.  The  disturbing  cause 
here  might  be  summed  up  in  a  phrase  as  the 
short-sighted  selfishness  of  religious  enjoyment. 
The  inner  history  of  the  conscience  which  offers 
this  phenomenon  may  be  traced  somewhat  as 
follows :  Upon  a  highly  sensitive  nature  there 
comes,  whether  by  sudden  emotional  inflow  or 
by  quieter  inner  movements,  a  condition  of 
spiritual  feeling  which  is  recognised  as  the 
highest  and  purest  enjoyment  that  life  has  yet 
afforded.  Call  it  what  we  will — "conversion," 


120        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

"  reconciliation,"  "  the  sense  of  God,"  "  the 
higher  life" — it  is  there,  a  rapturous  experience 
known  to  multitudes  and  recognised  by  them 
as  an  incomparable  treasure  and  luxury  of  the 
soul. 

The  natural  and  immediate  sequence  of  the 
experience  is  the  desire  and  resolve  to  retain 
this  joy  at  all  costs.  Whatever  seems  to 
diminish  its  intensity  or  to  fail  to  contribute  to 
its  increase  is  regarded  as  an  enemy  to  be 
avoided.  And  everything,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  appears  to  aid  it,  or  to  open  up  sources  for 
its  supply,  is  welcomed  and  cherished.  But 
the  age-long  experience  of  the  human  spirit  has 
at  last  begun  to  discover  that  even  this  loftiest 
phase  of  the  heart's  life  has  its  own  dangers  ; 
that  its  impulses  are  not  all  to  be  trusted,  that 
its  verdicts  must  be  tested  by  another  court 
if  they  are  not  to  lead  us  astray. 

The  manner  in  which  this  feeling,  left  to 
itself,  has  repeatedly  and  disastrously  missed 
its  way  is  writ  large  in  human  history.  One 
can  trace  three  separate  wrong  directions  along 
which  the  instinct  has  operated.  In  the  first 
place,  in  the  search  for  what  seemed  its  most 
appropriate  food,  it  has,  especially  in  earlier 
days,  given  a  false  currency  to  the  miraculous 


OF  FALSE  CONSCIENCE.  121 

and  the  supernatural.  Craving  ever  for  its 
sense  of  God,  it  went  on  the  supposition  that 
He  was  most  distinctly  to  be  realised  in  what 
transcended  the  order  of  Nature.  Here  is  the 
origin  of  those  "  wonder  stories  "  which  flowed 
from  the  imagination  of  the  pious  minds  of 
former  times,  written  and  read  with  the  single 
idea  of  promoting  that  religious  rapture  of 
which  the  supernatural  alone  seemed  to  be  the 
source.  Whether  they  are  Jewish  haggadah  in 
which  prophets  are  transported  across  continents 
by  the  hair  of  their  head,  or  "  Gospels  of  the 
Infancy,"  which  represent  the  Saviour  as 
addressing  profound  sayings  to  Mary  from  the 
cradle,  or  mediaeval  lives  of  the  saints,  such  as 
Bonaventura's  of  Francis  of  Assisi,  stuffed  with 
marvels,  they  bear  the  same  stamp  and  are 
from  the  same  mint.  Protestants  as  well  as 
Catholics  have  yielded  to  this  impulse.  We 
read  in  Mary's  reign  of  a  voice,  thought  by  the 
people  to  be  that  of  an  angel,  speaking  against 
the  Mass  from  a  wall  in  Aldgate,  when  the 
angel  turned  out  to  be  a  girl  concealed  behind 
the  plaster.  This  aberration  of  the  old-time 
conscience  in  the  interest  of  the  religious  feel- 
ing is  pressing  specially  hard  upon  us  to-day. 
It  is  burdening  the  Church  with  one  of  its  most 


122        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

difficult  and  painful  tasks  in  the  unravelling  of 
truth  from  error. 

The  desire  of  the  soul  to  preserve  its  God- 
consciousness  unimpaired  has  led  religion  along 
a  second  fatal  track,  that  of  the  banning  of 
inquiry  and  of  contrary  opinion.  Received 
doctrine  being,  as  was  maintained,  the  vessel 
that  held  the  treasure,  to  touch  the  one  was  to 
imperil  the  other.  Hence  that  "  castration  of 
the  intellect,"  to  use  Nietzsche's  terrible  phrase 
which  for  centuries  characterised  ecclesiastical 
procedure;  the  feeling  that  led  Augustine  to 
assert  that  schismatics  would  suffer  eternal 
punishments,  "  although  for  the  name  of  Christ 
they  had  been  burned  alive";  which  found 
voice  in  Cardinal  Pole's  dictum  that  murder 
and  adultery  were  not  to  be  compared  in 
heinousness  with  heresy ;  which  in  our  own  day 
made  Newman  declare  that  "  a  publisher  of 
heresy  should  be  treated  as  if  he  were  embodied 
evil,"  and  the  gentle  Keble  to  regard  scholars 
who  applied  modern  scientific  criticism  to  the 
Bible  as  "  Men  too  wicked  to  be  reasoned  with." 
A  milder  form  of  the  same  feeling  is  that  which 
burks  inquiry  from  fear  that  the  results  will 
damage  one's  religious  joy.  It  is  this  which  in 
the  sixteenth  century  gave  occasion  to  the  gibe 


OP  FALSE  CONSCIENCE.  123 

of  Erasmus  that  "  our  theologians  call  it  a  sign 
of  holiness  to  be  unable  to  read."  What,  if  it 
had  not  been  said  in  our  own  hearing,  would 
have  been  less  credible  was  a  recent  declaration 
of  thankfulness  by  a  Nonconformist  minister 
that  he  had  never  learned  German  !  "  German 
religious  thought  was  so  unsettling !  "  That  a 
man  whose  business  it  was  to  know  and  to 
teach  should  in  these  days  express  gratitude  for 
ignorance  would  be  inconceivable  in  any  other 
sphere.  But  in  theology  all  things  are  possible. 
Only  very  slowly  is  the  religious  conscience 
beginning  to  understand  what  Pascal  tried  to 
teach  it  more  than  two  centuries  ago,  that  "  the\ 
first  of  all  Christian  truths  is  that  truth  should 
be  loved  above  all";  only  now  is  it  beginning  to 
realise  that  the  God-consciousness,  to  preserve 
which  it  has  often  so  ignorantly  striven,  reaches, 
only  its  loftiest  form  when  the  intellect  is  per- 
mitted its  fullest  and  freest  play. 

The  third  of  the  ways  in  which  the  unedu- 
cated instinct  for  religious  joy  has  tended  to 
mislead  the  conscience  has  been  by  practising 
what  seemed  the  cheap  and  easy  process  of 
exclusion.  Secular  pursuits,  interests  and 
enthusiasms  drew  the  mind  off  God  and  were 
therefore  as  far  as  possible  to  be  barred. 


124        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Hence  science,  the  arts,  the  drama,  physical 
exercises  and  pastimes  were  banned  as  hostile 
to  the  Divine  life.  To-day  in  many  circles  that 
ban  is  not  yet  raised.  There  is  a  story  of  a 
modern  evangelist  shutting  his  eyes  when  sail- 
ing up  the  Rhine  lest  the  beauty  of  the  scenery 
should  prove  a  temptation.  Even  learning  has 
with  some  modern  religionists  been  avoided 
as  distracting  from  true  piety.  It  is  distinctly 
a  credit  to  the  Jesuits,  with  all  their  faults, 
that  their  leader,  Ignatius  Loyola,  saw  the 
fallacy  of  all  this  and  taught  that  the  religious 
emotions,  fascinating  as  was  their  indulgence, 
must  not  be  allowed  to  hinder  the  acquirement 
of  scholarship  and  the  arts.  One  must  in  this 
sense  "  go  away  from  God  for  God ;  ad  majorem 
gloriam  Dei."  That  is  one  of  the  great  lessons 
of  the  inner  life  as  we  understand  it  to-day. 
We  are,  as  a  French  writer  has  powerfully  said, 
to  "  beware  of  a  religion  which  substitutes  itself 
for  everything;  that  makes  monks.  Seek  a 
religion  which  penetrates  everything ;  that 
makes  Christians."  We  are  discovering  now 
that  God  is  not  only  the  source  and  object  of 
the  religious  feelings,  but  that  He  is  also  a 
musician,  an  artist,  a  mathematician,  the 
Creator  and  Giver  of  all  beauty,  and  that  in 


OP  FALSE  CONSCIENCE.  125 

seeking  perfection  in  these  directions  we  are 
seeking  Him.  It  is  a  false  conscience  which 
would  shut  up  our  religious  interests  to  the 
narrow  ground  of  a  few  elementary  ideas. 
That  is  to  put  it  in  charge  of  a  kitchen  garden 
when  its  true  role  is  to  govern  a  universe. 


XIV. 
Religion    and    Medicine. 

IN  modern  civilisation  the  clergyman  and  the 
doctor  stand  at  such  a  distance  apart  that  it  is 
almost  difficult  for  us  to  realise  that  originally 
they  were  one  and  the  same  person.  Yet  there 
was  a  time  when  medicine — the  whole  business 
of  healing — was  a  purely  ecclesiastical  function. 
In  savage  tribes  to-day  the  "  medicine  man  "  is 
also  priest.  And  the  reason  is  evident.  The 
primitive  belief  everywhere  connected  disease 
with  spiritual  causes,  and  for  a  cure  looked  to 
the  supernatural.  Throughout  rural  India,  as 
Mr.  Crooke  in  his  "  Folk-Lore "  informs  us, 
sickness  is  attributed  to  spirits  or  to  the  anger 
of  offended  ancestors,  and  the  priest  or  "  holy 
man  "  is  in  such  cases  at  once  called  in  to  pro- 
pitiate or  exorcise  the  evil  influence.  We  need 
not,  indeed,  go  so  far  afield  for  similar  ideas. 
There  are  parts  of  rural  England  where  cramp, 
ague,  the  falling  sickness  and  other  ailments 
are  held  to  be  due  to  demonic  agency,  against 


EELIGION  AND  MEDICINE.  127 

which  the  remedy  is  in  charms  and  mystic  in- 
cantations. It  has  been  by  a  very  long  process, 
in  accordance  with  that  law  of  specialisation  of 
function  the  working  of  which  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  has  so  laboriously  delineated,  that  the 
medicinal  art  has,  amongst  civilised  peoples, 
gained  the  distinctive  place  of  which  we  find  it 
in  possession  to-day. 

Medicine,  on  its  way  to  becoming  a  science 
and  an  art,  has  had  some  rude  experiences. 
Its  earlier  stages  were  hardly  an  improvement 
on  the  old  supernaturalism.  For  a  charm  or 
an  exorcism,  if  they  did  no  good,  at  least  they 
hardly  did  harm.  Often,  indeed,  they  wrought 
their  miracles,  for  they  left  nature  to  do  her 
work,  assisted  by  that  mighty  reinforcement, 
faith.  It  was  another  matter  when  actual 
experiment  began  to  be  made  with  drug  and 
with  operating  knife  upon  the  human  subject. 
This  ticklish  business  of  putting,  as  Voltaire  so 
cruelly  insinuated,  "  drugs  of  which  you  know 
little  into  a  body  of  which  you  know  nothing," 
brought  the  healing  tribe  for  a  long  period  into 
grievous  disrepute.  They  have  been  the  sub- 
ject of  some  of  the  world's  oldest  witticisms. 
There  is  that  of  the  Lacedemonian,  who,  on 
being  asked  why  he  lived  so  long,  replied  that 


128  OlTESELVES   AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

it  was  because  of  his  ignorance  of  physte ;  and 
the  mot  of  Diogenes  to  an  inferior  wrestler  who 
had  turned  physician  :  "  Courage,  friend,  now 
thou  shalfc  put  them  into  the  ground  that 
beforetime  put  thee  on  it."  Montaigne 
makes  us  shudder  with  his  picture  of  the 
medical  practices  of  his  time.  Fancy  a  pre- 
scription which  included  "  the  left  foot  of  a 
tortoise,  the  excrement  of  an  elephant,  the 
liver  of  a  mole,  the  blood  from  under  the  left 
wing  of  a  white  pigeon,  and  rats  pounded  to  a 
small  powder  "  !  It  was  a  hardy  race,  surely, 
that  stood  all  this  and  yet  survived  to  tell  the 
tale. 

It  is  worth  while  recalling  these  earlier 
phases  of  the  healing  art  and  of  the  standing 
of  its  professors,  in  order  the  better  to  realise 
the  immense  change  that  we  witness  to-day. 
Resting  on  a  broad  basis  of  accurate  knowledge, 
master  of  a  thousand  secrets,  its  history 
crowded  with  glorious  victories  in  the  cam- 
paign against  disease  and  pain,  and  with  fore- 
most names,  with  intellect  and  worth  everywhere 
devoted  to  its  interests,  the  medical  profession 
has  reached  a  kind  of  apotheosis  in  modern 
life.  Art  has  expressed  the  present  estimate 
of  it  in  Mr.  Filde's  beautiful  picture  "  The 


RELIGION  AND  MEDICINE.  129 

Doctor,"  while  Ian  Maclaren  in  his  exquisite 
and  moving  portraiture  of  the  Drumtochty 
practitioner  has  written  the  same  sentiment 
into  literature.  The  feeling  has  grown  upon 
men  that  this  calling,  demanding  as  it  does  the 
constant  exercise  at  once  of  knowledge  and  of 
sympathy,  which  has  the  most  fascinating 
problems  for  the  intellect  and  the  most  imperi- 
ous claims  upon  the  heart,  whose  aim  is  the 
furtherance  of  life  and  the  defeat  of  death,  is 
emphatically  a  calling  for  noble  souls,  and 
noble  souls  in  abundance  have  flocked  into  it. 
To-day  the  personnel,  the  standing  and  the 
achievements  of  the  medical  profession  repre- 
sent one  of  the  most  valuable  assets  of  civilisa- 
tion. 

It  is  precisely  on  this  account  that  the 
question  becomes  so  interesting  as  to  the 
precise  present-day  relations  between  medicine 
and  religion.  One  of  our  reasons  for  writing 
on  the  subject  is  the  feeling  that,  in  more  than 
one  direction,  they  might  be  improved.  There 
is,  for  one  thing,  an  impression  abroad  that  the 
bent  of  the  physiological  mind  is  toward 
materialism.  The  old  saying,  "  tres  medici  duo 
aihei"  is  still  quoted.  Miss  Power  Cobbe,  in  a 
magazine  article  some  time  ago,  lamented  that 

9 


130        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  medical  faculty  was  setting  up  a  new  priest- 
hood which  was  to  replace  the  care  of  the  soul 
by  the  care  of  the  body.  There  is  certainly  no 
group  of  educated  men  so  exposed  to  that 
appeal  to  the  senses  on  which  materialism 
relies  as  are  our  doctors  and  surgeons.  More 
closely  to  them  than  to  the  rest  of  us  comes 
home  the  argument  of  Lucretius  : 

Prseterea  gigni  pariter  cum  corpore  et  una 
Crescere  sentimus,  pariterque  seneacere  mentem. 

"  Besides,  we  see  the  mind  to  be  born  with  the 
body,  to  grow  with  it,  and  with  it  to  decay." 
They  are  continually  in  contact  with  death,  as 
the  apparent  conqueror  and  extinguisher  of 
mind.  And  so  it  has  happened  that  some  of 
the  strongest  attacks  against  religious  ortho- 
doxy have  come  from  the  medical  and  physio- 
logical side.  Rabelais,  the  arch-scoffer  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  was  a  physician  as  well  as  a 
monk.  Darwin  and  Huxley,  who  gave  the  re- 
ligious sentiment  of  the  last  generation  so  rude 
a  shake,  were  bred  in  this  school.  It  is  also, 
in  this  connection,  a  curious  coincidence  that 
the  starter  of  the  modern  denial  of  the  Mosaic 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  should  have  been 
a  physician — the  Frenchman,  Jean  Astruc. 


RELIGION  AND  MEDICINE.  131 

It  is  one  of  the  greatest  misfortunes  of  the 
modern  specialisation  of  studies  that  it  should 
make  the  ablest  and  most  earnest  men  almost 
inevitably  one-sided.  And  nowhere  is  this 
result  more  to  be  lamented  than  in  the  sphere 
of  medicine.  For  here  the  sheer  necessity  of 
overtaking  and  keeping  abreast  of  the  enor- 
mous accumulation  of  technical  knowledge  in 
their  own  department  has  kept  numbers  of 
medical  men  comparatively  uneducated  on  a 
side  of  their  nature,  which,  for  the  purposes  of 
their  work,  requires  the  most  thorough  train- 
ing. The  question  here  is  not  that  of  their 
personal  attitude  towards  this  or  that  theo- 
logical dogma ;  it  is  whether  the  comparatively 
small  attention  paid  by  some  members  of  the 
faculty  to  the  spiritual  side  of  human  life  does 
not,  in  some  most  important  particulars,  hinder 
and  mar  their  professional  work  ?  On  abstract 
grounds  it  would,  we  believe,  be  not  difficult  to 
show  that  the  modern  spiritual  philosophy,  aa 
expounded  by  a  Caird,  a  Green  and  a  Mar- 
tineau,  has  effectively  met  the  arguments  of 
the  later  Materialism.  But  it  is  much  more  to 
the  point  to  show  how  medicine  can  neither  do 
justice  to  itself  nor  to  the  humanity  to  which 
it  ministers  unless  it  both  recognise  the 


132        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEESE. 

spiritual,  and,  what  is  more,  receive  a  definite 
training  in  its  laws. 

The  neglect  of  this  plainly-marked  depart- 
ment of  its  work  has,  for  one  thing,  kept  the 
ground  open  for  a  swarm  of  non-experts  and 
adventurers.  Heterodoxy  has  in  every  age  had 
the  function  of  showing  to  orthodoxy  the  new 
roads  ahead,  and  this  has  been  emphatically 
true  of  the  schools  of  medicine.  It  has  been 
reserved  for  the  outsiders,  who  have  in  succes- 
sive generations  stirred  the  wrath  of  orthodox 
medicine,  to  suggest  to  it  what  turn  out  in  the 
end  to  be  indubitable  truths.  What,  for 
instance,  is  the  doctrine  of  faith-healing,  for 
which  a  "  Dr."  Dowie  is  assaulted  by  a  crowd 
of  boisterous  medicos,  more  than  the  assertion, 
in  an  extravagant  form,  of  a  truth  now  on  its 
way  to  universal  acknowledgment,  that  the  body 
has  to  be  approached  first  and  foremost  through 
the  soul?  The  world  is  full  of  unformulated 
facts  on  this  question.  The  healings  wrought 
by  Christ  and  the  apostles,  the  cures  to  which 
Irenseus  bears  testimony  in  the  second  century, 
the  marvellous  physical  results  of  the  preaching 
of  Bernard,  the  raising  of  Melancthon  from 
what  seemed  immediate  death  at  the  prayer  of 
Luther,  are  parts  of  an  immense  tradition 


KELIGION  AND  MEDICINE.  133 

which  points  all  in  one  direction.  It  testifies 
to  the  existence  of  secret  spiritual  energies, 
potent  against  disease  and  for  the  fuitherance 
of  life,  which  under  certain  conditions  are  at 
the  disposition  of  humanity,  and  which  it 
behoves  the  men  responsible  in  these  depart- 
ments most  carefully  to  study. 

But  the  relations  of  medicine  with  the  spirit- 
ual by  no  means  end  here.  The  best  men  of 
the  profession  recognise  growingly,  we  believe, 
the  immense  moral  responsibilities  attaching  to 
it,  and  the  grave  questions  which  hang  thereon. 
Their  position  brings  them  continually  into  con- 
tact with  life's  ultimate  problems.  They  stand 
between  the  young  man  and  his  vices.  They 
see  humanity  in  its  defeats,  its  exhaustions,  its 
despairs.  They  are  called  in  to  the  spectacle  of 
life-bankruptcies  when  all  the  physical  forces 
have  been  rioted  away,  and  there  is  a  famine  of 
power  and  of  joy.  Every  day  they  see  men  face, 
with  what  philosophy  they  can  muster,  the  last 
enemy.  And  their  entree  is  to  every  class.  They 
are  called  in  where  the  clergy  are  excluded.  In 
their  parish  there  are  practically  no  dissenters. 

To  a  man  of  the  nobler  instincts  the  appeal 
of  this  helplessness  and  despair  should  be  irre- 
sistible. But  what  has  he  to  meet  it  with  ?  In 


134        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

nine  cases  out  of  ten  physical  alleviation  is  the 
smallest  part  of  what  a  sufferer  needs.  The 
thing  he  wants  above  all  is  hope  and  courage. 
But  where  is  our  practitioner  to  find  this  ;  where 
is  he  to  gain  power  to  stiffen  the  moral  back- 
bone of  tempted  youth  ;  or  to  cheer  the  lonely 
invalid  to  whom  the  days  are  a  weariness  and 
the  nights  a  horror;  to  help  men  gain  the 
supreme  moral  victory  over  suffering  and  over 
death  ?  One  must  put  it  bluntly  :  he  cannot  be 
a  good  doctor  who  is  not  fundamentally  a  good 
man.  Emphatically  is  it  true  for  his  work  that 
"  one  man  with  a  belief  is  worth  ten  men  with 
only  interests."  What  we  are  here  saying  has 
nothing  to  do  with  sectarianism  ;  still  less  with 
that  professional  religionism  which  is  the  most 
detestable  of  all  poses.  It  is  simply  the  asser- 
tion of  certain  fundamental  truths  that  have 
been  lacking  in  some  medical  curriculums,  and 
of  which,  in  conclusion,  we  may  give  this  as  the 
sum  :  Medical  science  is  ultimately  a  branch  of 
spiritual  science ;  bodily  healing  requires  a 
knowledge  of  psychic  as  well  as  of  physical 
conditions ;  and  finally,  the  medical  ministry  to 
a  diseased  and  broken  humanity  can  never  be 
adequate  unless  carried  on  as  a  mediation  of 
the  Eternal  Goodness  and  Love. 


XV. 
Spiritual    Undercurrents. 

IF  a  man  who  has  purchased  an  acre  of  land 
could  only  comprehend  and  utilise  the  values 
that  he  has  here  obtained  he  would  be  over- 
whelmed with  the  sense  of  his  riches.  He  is 
going  to  make  what  he  can  of  the  surface,  but 
knows  practically  nothing  of  what  he  owns 
underneath.  Hints  of  what  lies  there  occasion- 
ally make  themselves  heard,  and  the  favoured 
ones  in  whose  ears  they  are  whispered  win 
fortunes  in  coal,  in  oil,  in  gold.  But  these, 
after  all,  are  only  scratchings  of  the  outer 
crust,  leaving  immeasurable  depths  unsearched. 
Little  by  little  we  are  learning  what  a  realm  of 
forces  we  are  at  the  top  of.  We  discover  that 
bodies  related  to  each  other  by  their  separate 
chemical  qualities  and  affinities  are  under  the 
common  sway  of  mysterious  earth-currents, 
magnetisms  and  what  not,  that  sweep  the 
central  deeps  and  are  felt  from  pole  to  pole. 
The  world,  as  a  purely  physical  system,  is 


136        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

governed  far  more  by  what  is  hidden  than  by 
what  we  see. 

When  we  turn  our  attention  from  the  round 
globe  itself  to  the  being  who  lives  on  it,  we 
seem  to  find  all  this  repeated  in  another 
sphere.  A  man  must  be  reckoned  not  so  much 
by  what  he  is,  as  by  the  sum  of  the  forces  that 
are  acting  on  him.  In  the  purely  physical  life 
who  is  to  say  when  the  outside  air  which  he 
draws  into  his  lungs,  or  the  food  of  which  he 
partakes,  is,  and  is  not  he?  When  we  have 
taken  stock  of  a  man's  visible  outfit,  reckoned 
up  his  bit  of  brain,  his  level  of  culture,  his 
apparent  reach  of  faculty,  have  we  here  the 
sum  of  his  life  possibilities  ?  Far  from  it.  To 
get  that  we  have  to  take  into  account  the 
spiritual  system  to  which  he  belongs,  and  to 
estimate  what  he  may  do  or  become  under  the 
impact  of  its  mysterious  powers.  Here,  too, 
we  are  becoming  sensible  of  mighty  under- 
currents. They  sweep  along  the  whole  unseen 
force-region  that  lies  underneath  humanity, 
and  to  comprehend  them  is,  we  are  beginning 
to  realise,  a  fundamental  element  in  the  busi- 
ness of  life.  There  are  side  branches  of  this 
theme  along  which,  at  this  point,  one  is  much 
tempted  to  diverge.  One  might,  for  instance, 


SPIRITUAL  UNDERCURRENTS.  137 

discuss  here  those  strange  psychical  phenomena 
about  which  Kant  was  constrained  to  say: 
"  For  my  part,  ignorant  as  I  am  of  the  way  in 
which  the  human  spirit  enters  the  world,  and 
the  ways  in  which  it  goes  out  of  it,  I  dare  not 
deny  the  truth  of  many  of  such  narratives." 
But  these  phases  of  the  topic,  absorbing  as 
they  are  to  many  modern  minds,  are  not  the 
main  point.  And  we  want  here  to  keep 
to  that. 

Of  the  spiritual  system  to  which  we  have 
just  referred  as  offering  the  real  measure  of 
our  separate  possibility,  the  New  Testament  is 
the  manual  in  chief,  and  yet  there  is  no  book 
that  on  this  point  has  been  more  misunder- 
stood. The  Christianity  it  depicts  offers  us, 
for  one  thing,  a  marvellous  object-lesson  on 
human  nature  and  its  unseen  environment.  It 
shows  us  what  can  be  made  of  the  average  man 
when  a  new  force  plays  on  him.  Its  language, 
and  the  facts  it  recites  as  to  the  "  endowment 
with  power  "  and  the  "  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit," 
are  a  piece  of  spiritual  geography  exhibiting, 
with  a  clearness  and  certainty  new  to  the 
world,  the  features  of  the  great  power-realm 
which  environs  humanity.  But  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  manual  has  been  hitherto  a  crude 


138         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

and  unscientific  business,  and  we  are  only  just 
emerging  upon  a  view  of  the  facts  that  is  solid 
and  satisfying.  To  listen  to  some  talk  still 
current,  one  might  suppose  that  the  "  gift "  or 
"  outpouring "  of  the  Spirit  were  a  kind  of 
parochial  phenomenon,  showing  at  hazard 
amongst  this  or  that  group  of  enthusiasts, 
and  whose  chief  characteristic  was  the  element 
of  caprice  and  of  the  incalculable.  Men  quote 
the  text,  "  The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth," 
and  forthwith  conclude  they  have  to  deal  with 
something  that  quite  transcends  any  question 
of  law  or  of  uniformity.  As  though  the  wind 
were  outside  the  sweep  of  law !  We  do  not 
indulge  in  talk  of  this  kind  in  the  other 
departments  in  which  man  is  to-day  enriching 
his  life.  Electricity  is  an  outside  power  by 
whose  reinforcement  we  have  quadrupled  our 
energies,  but  we  know  better  than  to  treat  its 
coming  or  going  as  belonging  to  the  uncertain 
or  the  inexplicable.  The  analogy  here  suggested 
is  worth  pausing  upon.  When  we  call  ours 
the  age  of  electricity,  what  do  we  mean? 
Certainly  not  that  electricity  has  been  bestowed 
on  the  world  in  our  time.  It  was  there 
all  the  time.  The  difference  is  that  ours 
is  the  age  in  which  its  existence  has  been 


SPIRITUAL  UNDERCURRENTS.  139 

recognised,  its  laws  ascertained,  and  the  appli- 
cations of  its  force,  in  part  at  least,  understood. 
It  may  yet  be  that  the  twentieth  century  will 
be  known,  in  comparison  with  former  times,  as 
the  age  of  the  Spirit,  and  for  a  similar  reason. 
No  new  forces  will  have  been  created,  but  the  old 
ones,  the  spiritual  undercurrents  that  have  been 
running  from  the  beginning,  will  have  been 
uncovered  and  tapped,  and  the  human  soul 
bathed  in  their  constant  supply. 

What  has  so  much  confused  our  thinking  in 
this  matter  has  been  the  question  of  personality, 
and  especially  our  thinking  about  the  supreme 
personality  of  Christ.  We  speak  of  the  Spirit 
as  His  gift,  and  that  on  excellent  authority,  for 
so  is  it  stated  in  the  New  Testament.  On  the 
same  high  authority  we  speak  of  the  Spirit  as  a 
Person,  as  part  of  the  personality  of  God. 
And  here  also  we  do  well.  Not  so  well,  though, 
in  the  inferences  we  are  apt  to  draw.  How  did 
Jesus  give  us  the  Spirit  ?  How  did  Faraday 
give  us  electricity  ?  Not  by  creating,  but  by 
revealing.  The  gift  in  each  case  was  there, 
old  as  eternity,  but  with  a  veil  on  its  face.  In 
each  case  the  moment  in  human  evolution  came, 
the  ripened  time  for  the  unveiling.  Jesus,  in 
His  historical  manifestation,  was  what  He  was 


140        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

through  the  new  relation  of  His  personality  to 
the  spiritual  forces,  just  as,  in  an  immeasurably 
lower  sphere,  Faraday  was  what  he  was  through 
a  new  relation  to  the  electric  forces.  The  New 
Testament  is  abundantly  clear  on  this  point. 
The  Christ  had  his  power  through  being  "  filled 
with  the  Spirit."  According  to  his  own  testi- 
mony He  could  "  do  nothing  of  Himself."  His 
place  in  history  was  and  is  unique,  because  of 
His  unique  receptivity  for  the  fulness  of  Divine 
Life. 

The  gist  of  this  is  that  the  spiritual  under- 
currents on  which  the  higher  life  depends  are 
not  variants,  but  constants.  It  is  a  question  not 
of  the  flow  and  ebb  of  their  tide,  for  their  tide 
knows  no  ebb,  but  of  the  extent  and  delicacy 
of  the  surface  we  can  open  to  their  impact. 
There  is  no  break  here  between  the  analogies 
of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  world.  The 
uniformity  of  the  laws  on  which  we  depend  in 
nature  is  not  more  exact  than  the  uniformity 
we  find  in  the  kingdom  of  grace.  In  both  we 
have  to  do  with  the  same  ineffable  Personality. 
In  gravitation,  as  in  inspiration,  we  are  in 
contact  with  the  one  eternal  Spirit  of  God. 

The  significance  of  the  history  of  Jesus  for 
us  is,  then,  partly,  at  least,  the  revelation  it 


SPIRITUAL   UNDERCURRENTS.  141 

offers  of  the  possibilities  of  humanity  when  in 
fullest  union  with  its  spiritual  environment. 
Verily,  here  is  He  the  first  born  of  a  new 
creation,  the  forerunner  in  a  new  and  higher 
stage  of  development.  That  perfect  life,  with 
its  Divine  self -consciousness,  its  utter  purity,  its 
love,  its  Calvary-consummated  sacrifice,  opened, 
as  it  were,  the  sluices  through  which  the  pent- 
up  spiritual  currents,  hitherto  hidden,  could 
roll  in  upon  a  thirsty  humanity,  bringing 
Paradise  in  their  flow.  Precious  beyond  words 
is  that  draught  of  the  undercurrent,  and  beyond 
words  precious  is  He  to  whom  we  owe  it. 
Mankind,  said  Goethe,  is  continually  progress- 
ing, but  the  individual  man  is  ever  the  same. 
The  same,  that  is,  in  his  central  need,  a  need 
which  no  progress  in  civilisation  can  ever 
supply,  but  which  is  met  and  satisfied  through 
Christ.  As  men  understand  these  things  more, 
the  more  will  they  enter  into  that  sheer, 
adoring  love  of  Christ  which  perfumes  the 
New  Testament.  The  language  of  Christina 
Rossetti  becomes  our  own :  "  How  beautiful  are 
the  arms  which  have  embraced  Christ,  the 
hands  which  have  touched  Christ,  the  eyes 
which  have  gazed  upon  Christ,  the  lips  which 
have  spoken  with  Christ,  the  feet  which  have 


142         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

followed  Christ ;  how  beautiful  are  the  hands 
which  have  worked  the  works  of  Christ,  the 
feet  which,  treading  in  His  footsteps,  have 
gone  about  doing  good,  the  lips  that  have 
spread  abroad  His  name,  the  lives  which  have 
been  counted  loss  for  Him !  " 

The  relation  of  Christ's  personality  to  the 
spiritual  undercurrents  is,  in  a  lower  degree, 
that  of  all  His  followers.  It  is,  in  a  way,  like 
what  we  have  in  magnetism,  where,  in  addition 
to  the  great,  central,  perennial  earth  currents, 
there  is  the  separate  and  varying  magnetic 
susceptibility  of  each  different  object  and 
element.  The  spiritual  currents  concentrate  in 
us,  form  in  us  reservoirs  of  power,  use  us  as 
media  of  their  mighty  movement.  It  is  pre- 
cisely to  the  extent  in  which  we  are  in  touch 
with  them  that,  as  Churches  or  as  individuals, 
we  are  of  any  religious  use  to  the  world. 
What  a  spectacle  that  of  a  Church  with  all  its 
organism  complete  for  work,  but  with  the 
stream  that  should  furnish  its  driving-power 
cutting  for  itself  a  channel  in  a  new  direction, 
and  leaving  all  this  ecclesiastical  plant  high  and 
dry  on  the  deserted  shore !  This  is  what  Carlyle 
had  in  view  when,  in  a  passage  written  sixty 
years  ago,  but  which  has  not  yet  lost  its  signi- 


SPIRITUAL  UNDERCURRENTS.  143 

ficance,  he  speaks  of  "these  distracted  times 
when  the  religious  principle,  driven  out  of  most 
churches,  either  lives  unseen  in  the  hearts  of 
good  men,  looking  and  longing  and  silently 
working  towards  some  new  revelation,  or  else 
wanders  homeless  over  the  world  like  a  disem- 
bodied soul  seeking  its  terrestrial  organism  !  " 
It  is  for  the  Church  of  to-day  to  render  such 
a  consummation  impossible,  and  now  is  its 
supreme  opportunity.  With  all  history  behind 
it,  with  a  clearer  apprehension  than  has  ever 
before  been  known  of  its  mission  and  its  powers, 
with  the  humanity  it  deals  with  visibly  opening 
to  new  and  deeper  apprehensions  of  the  truth 
and  life  it  brings,  the  Church  has  now  in  its 
reach  the  clear  possibility  of  revolutionising  the 
world  and  of  establishing  it  upon  the  immutable 
basis  of  God's  spiritual  law.  Its  new  regime 
will  be,  in  the  best  sense,  a  scientific  one. 
Just  as,  in  the  electrical  sphere,  no  teacher  of 
the  science  is  possible  who  is  ignorant  of,  or 
careless  about,  the  laws  which  operate  in  it,  so 
in  this  spiritual  sphere  no  Church  authority 
will  be  recognised  which  is  not  founded  on 
knowledge  of,  and  obedience  to,  the  inner  laws. 
The  idea  of  a  Church  subsisting  on,  or  working 
by,  any  other  power  than  that  which  rises  in 


144        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  spiritual  world,  will  be  felt  to  be  as  absurd 
as  Laputa's  project  for  extracting  sunbeams  from 
cucumbers.  The  Church's  speech,  its  prayers, 
even  its  silences,  will  be  channels  of  the  Spirit's 
mighty  undercurrent.  No  preacher  will  venture 
the  impertinence  of  utterance  which,  either  in 
substance  or  in  delivery,  is  divorced  from  the 
operation  of  the  kingdom's  law. 

As  a  crater,  in  an  eruption,  is  onlj  the  organ 
and  mouthpiece,  as  it  were,  of  forces  infinitely 
beyond  its  own  range,  working  far  beneath,  so 
the  worker  in  this  kingdom,  be  he  never  so 
eminent  or  never  so  humble,  will  recognise  that 
so  is  it  with  him.  If  his  work  is  worth  any- 
thing at  all  he  will  know  that  its  worth  consists 
precisely  in  this,  that  it  originates  in  a  sphere 
beyond  himself. 


XVI. 
On    Being  Inferior. 

ONE  of  the  greatest  disciplines  of  the  inner  life 
lies  in  the  choice  that  is  offered  us  as  to  the 
treatment  of  our  own  inferiority.  It  is  a  dis- 
cipline which  none  of  us  is  allowed  to  escape. 
Some  of  us  are  very  low  down.  There  are 
ranges  and  ranges  of  visible  human  life  that 
are  far  above  us.  But  the  sense  of  inferiority 
is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  poor  or  the 
meagrely  gifted.  The  highest  amongst  men 
are  really  in  the  same  position,  and  are  often 
made  to  feel  it  the  most  acutely.  Illustrations 
of  this  will  come  presently,  but  meanwhile  the 
point  is  as  to  how  we  regard  the  fact  in  itself. 
That  its  true  lesson  is  difficult  to  learn  is  evident 
from  the  stumbles  over  it  that  are  everywhere 
made.  There  are,  for  instance,  the  meaner  souls 
who  seek  to  balance  matters  by  an  inane  and 
spiteful  process  of  levelling  down ;  whose 

.     .     .    low  desire 

Not  to  feel  lowest  makes  them  level  all. 

10 


146        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

A  variety  of  the  same  species  is  the  man 
whose  morbid  self-conceit  leads  him  to  fix  on 
some  chance  feature  of  his  individuality  in 
which  he  surpasses  his  neighbours  as  a  reason 
for  ignoring  the  thousand  points  in  which  he  is 
beneath  them.  Often  enough  the  feature  itself 
is  of  ludicrously  small  importance.  Our  great 
man  is  some  "  Thrasybulus  of  the  ward  of 
Stira,  who  had  the  strongest  voice  of  any  man 
among  the  Athenians."  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  men  who  allow  their  sense  of  defect  to 
crush  out  all  manly  self-confidence.  It  was  the 
reverse  of  the  true  way  of  taking  his  own  in- 
feriority which  led  poor  Benedict  XII.,  on 
hearing  of  his  election  as  Pope,  to  say  to  the 
conclave,  "  Brethren,  you  have  chosen  an  ass." 
Yet,  again,  there  are  in  our  day  not  a  small 
number  who  gird  at  their  limitation  of  position 
and  gifts  as  part  of  that  great  system  of  in- 
equality which,  in  their  eyes,  is  the  most 
flagrant  instance  of  the  injustice  of  life,  and 
consequently  of  the  immorality  of  the  universe. 

It  is  surely  not  for  such  results  that  life 
brings  us  under  the  discipline  of  being  inferior. 
In  searching  for  the  true  ends  of  it  let  us  try 
first  to  get  at  the  facts  of  the  case.  What 
meets  us  at  the  outset  is  the  circumstance  that 


ON  BEING  INPERIOE.  147 

our  inferiority  one  to  another  is  mixed  up  in  a 
most  complicated  way.  There  is  no  absolute 
superiority.  We  are  all  at  once  superior  and 
inferior.  The  mixing  process  commences  with 
an  initial  difference  of  rank.  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  fond  of  saying  that  English  society  was 
immutably  based  on  its  finely-graded  and 
clearly-recognised  system  of  classes,  of  which 
the  throne  was  the  apex.  The  New  World  is 
spoken  of  sometimes  as  having  abolished  this 
system  and  founded  another  on  the  basis  of 
human  equality.  It  is  hardly  so.  Names  have 
been  changed,  but  not  things.  There  is  no 
more  equality  in  America  than  there  is  in 
England ;  nor  can  be,  for  the  thing  is  not  in 
human  nature.  And  it  is  amusing  to  think 
that  the  stoutest  Republican  recognises  to  the 
full  the  doctrine  of  inequality,  of  absolute 
monarchy  even,  in  his  religion,  where  he 
worships  one  supreme  Euler,  and  speaks  of  a 
hierarchy  of  saints  and  angels.  No  true  man, 
in  fact,  girds  at  rank.  He  knows  that  it  re- 
presents something  worthy,  if  not  in  its  actual 
possessor,  yet  assuredly  in  the  force  that 
created  it.  It  is  there,  the  evidence  of  a 
primal  life-power  that  once  lifted  itself 
amongst  men  and  made  itself  respected. 


148        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

But  the  man  high  in  social  position  is  full, 
in  his  turn,  of  inferiorities.  When  Charles  V. 
picked  up  Titian's  fallen  brush  and  handed  it 
to  the  painter  with  the  remark  that  he  was 
proud  to  wait  on  so  supreme  a  genius,  the 
master  of  half  the  world  spoke  here  with  a  full 
sense  of  an  inferior  towards  a  superior.  In  the 
artist's  great  realm  of  life  he  knew  himself  to 
occupy  the  lower  place.  In  the  yet  higher 
sphere  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  this  interplay 
of  values  is  even  more  striking.  The  Stoic 
Epictetus,  who  had  emperors  afterwards  for 
disciples,  was  a  Greek  slave.  The  Galilean 
peasant  whom  Pilate  condemned  did  not  dis- 
pute for  a  moment  the  higher  social  rank  of 
the  judge.  But  to-day  the  judges  and  great 
ones  of  the  earth  name  the  Galilean's  name 
with  religious  devotion,  and  have  no  words 
which  adequately  express  their  sense  of  His 
rank  in  the  world.  Throughout  history,  in 
fact,  the  moral  and  spiritual  superiorities  seem 
by  a  kind  of  law  to  have  been  wedded  with 
lowliness  of  outward  position.  Libanius  made 
fun  of  the  early  Christians  as  a  set  of  tinkers 
and  cobblers  who  had  left  their  mallets  and 
awls  to  preach  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Spinoza  ground  lenses  for  a  livelihood.  George 


ON  BEING  INFERIOR.  149 

Fox  and  Jacob  Bohme  got  theirs  by  cutting 
leather.  Literature  tells  the  same  story.  From 
Homer  downwards  the  kings  of  ideas  have 
been,  as  often  as  not,  bankrupt  of  pocket.  Yet 
always  the  wealthy  and  the  great  have  felt 
their  own  smallness  beside  these  beggars. 
Pauperemque  dives  me  petit.  "  The  rich  man 
seeks  me,  the  poor  man,"  has  been  the  poet's 
boast  in  every  age. 

But  this,  it  may  be  said,  is  only  a  partial 
and  specious  view.  To  pit  intellectual  and 
moral  values  against  material  and  social  ones  is, 
we  shall  be  told,  only  to  trifle  with  the  subject. 
For  when  the  superiorities  both  of  money 
and  rank  and  of  brain  and  heart  have  been 
accounted  for,  the  real  question  remains.  These 
rich  dowers,  inward  and  outward,  belong  after 
all  to  the  exceptional.  What  of  the  vast 
average  of  men,  the  dim  multitudes,  who  have 
no  special  gift,  either  of  property,  rank  or 
mind  ?  There  surely  is  a  "  being  inferior  " 
with  no  romance  in  it ;  in  which  one  fails 
utterly  to  find  the  ideal !  No  one  with  open 
eyes  will  think  so.  The  higher  up  a  man  is  the 
more  profound  will  be  his  respect  for  the 
average  humanity,  the  more  humble  will  he  be 
in  its  presence.  For  it  is  here  in  the  midst  of 


150        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  common  and  the  normal,  in  life's  mid-stream 
rather  than  amongst  the  exceptions,  that  he 
will  recognise  with  awe  the  existence  of  a 
Power  in  humanity  mightier  than  its  own,  a 
Power  that  is  working  out  ideas  infinitely 
greater  than  those  of  the  ablest  individual  man. 
This  study  of  the  superiority  that  lurks  in 
and  beneath  the  life  of  the  common  man  is,  in 
fact,  the  one  thing  needful  and  grievously 
lacking  among  the  present-day  accredited  pur- 
veyors of  our  moral  ideas.  It  would  do  some 
of  our  armchair  theologians,  who  judge  man- 
kind by  their  prim  lists  of  ecclesiastical 
"  virtues  and  their  contrary  vices,"  a  world  of 
good  if  they  could  spend  some  months  amongst, 
say,  the  common  sailors  on  board  an  ocean 
tramp.  On  Sundays,  while  the  tramp's  owners 
and  the  pious  British  public  generally  are  at 
church,  they  would  find  these  men  at  some 
foreign  port  loading  grain  or  coal.  Their 
language  will  not  be  ecclesiastical,  and  when 
they  get  a  day  ashore  their  procedures  are  not 
such  as  are  provided  for  in  the  Assembly's 
Catechism.  This,  without  doubt,  is  very 
shocking.  But  by-and-by  it  will  dawn  upon 
our  theologian,  if  he  have  grace,  that  the  moral 
and  spiritual  lack  of  these  men  is  the  sacrifice 


ON  BEING  INFERIOR.  151 

they  are  offering  to  the  interests  of  the  religious 
British  public;  that  their  Sunday  and  week- 
day labour,  their  exposure  to  the  tempests  of 
ocean,  and  to  the  thieves  and  harlots  of  the 
foreign  port,  are  the  price  at  which  this  stay- 
at-home  public  gets  its  corn  and  wine,  its  com- 
forts and  luxuries,  three-parts,  in  fact,  of  all  it 
eats,  drinks  and  wears.  It  dawns  upon  him 
that  if  vicarious  sacrifice  is  the  highest  height 
and  deepest  heart  of  morals,  then  these  men, 
who  have  sacrificed  the  interests  of  their  bodies 
and  their  souls  for  the  rest  of  us,  are  in  their 
unchurched  paganism  actually  a  great  deal 
higher  up  than  we.  When  besides  he  has 
touched  hands  with  these  men,  and  known  their 
childlike  simplicity,  their  quick  response  to 
what  is  higher  when  it  is  offered,  their  splendid 
courage,  their  noble  devotion,  he  will  be  more 
than  ever  inclined  when  he  comes  back  to  revise 
his  theology.  He  will  search  for  some  new 
definitions  as  to  who  is  high  and  who  is  low 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

The  superior  and  the  inferior  are  then,  we 
find,  lying  everywhere  side  by  side,  and  we  are 
now,  perhaps,  furnished  with  an  answer  to  the 
question  we  asked  at  the  beginning,  as  to  what 
this  feature  in  our  life  is  meant  to  accomplish 


152  OURSELVES    AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

in  us.     The  true  man  is  simply  amazed  at  the 
notion   that  there   can    be   any    injustice    in 
inferiority.     The  sense  of  it,  rightly  taken,  is, 
he  realises,  one  of  our  greatest  inward  helps. 
It  is   a  miserable  business  to   be  perpetually 
looking  down.     What  we  want  is  something  to 
look  up  to.     It  is  the  altitudes  that  make  us 
climbers.     An    awakened  nature   is  positively 
greedy  after  occasions  for  respect  and  venera- 
tion.    And  he  finds  them  everywhere,  and  most 
of  all   amongst  the   commonest  people.     His 
attitude  to  a  nature  manifestly  better  than  his 
own  is  that  of  a  man  who  has  come  on  a  new 
treasure.     A  great  soul  is  a  banquet  to  which 
we  are  all  invited.     Shall  we  be  envious  that 
this  feast  of  which  we  are  partaking  is  so  rich  ? 
"Against  the   superiority    of    another,"    said 
Goethe,  "there  is  no  remedy  but  love."     A 
deep  saying,  but  expressing  only  half  the  truth ; 
for  where  love  is  the  light  of  our  seeing  there 
will  be   no  question    of   "  remedies "  against 
superiority.     The  question  will  be  how  most 
fully  to  open  ourselves  to  its   strength,   and 
how  to  be  lifted  highest  on  the  wings  of  its 
inspiration. 


xvn. 
Our  Contribution    to    Life. 

THERE  is  food  for  abundant  thinking  in  that 
apocalyptic  conception  of  a  great  human  judg- 
ment in  which  books  are  to  be  opened.  The 
suggestion  here  of  a  kind  of  celestial  book- 
keeping, in  which  a  debtor  and  creditor  account 
is  kept  between  us  and  the  universe,  sounds 
startling  enough,  and  yet,  the  more  we  ponder 
it,  the  closer  does  it  seem  to  the  facts.  Life, 
as  we  have  known  it,  suggests  irresistibly  the 
idea  of  an  unseen  capitalist  who  has  invested 
largely  in  us,  and  who  is  looking  for  a  return. 
At  the  beginning  the  account  is  all  on  one  side. 
Our  existence  is  a  passivity,  a  vast  continuous 
reception.  Our  entrance  into  the  world,  as  a 
tiny  bundle  of  fates  and  destinies,  a  thin 
segment  of  the  infinite,  a  link  between  nothing 
and  everything,  is  in  itself  a  momentous  con- 
tribution to  life,  but  it  is  not  our  own.  The 
very  "  I "  that  we  now  cling  to  as  most 
centrally  ours  was  none  of  our  choosing.  That 


154        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  new  consciousness  which  in  us  came  to  the 
surface  should  emerge  on  this  tiny  planet 
instead  of  on  a  satellite  of  Sirius,  that  it 
should  appear  in  the  nineteenth  century  instead 
of  the  sixth  or  sixtieth,  that  it  should  be  of 
this  particular  physical  and  mental  capacity, 
of  this  precise  shade  of  temperament, — these 
and  a  thousand  other  decisions  out  of  ten 
million  "might  he's,"  are  all  an  affair  of  the 
Investor,  who  is  not  ourselves.  One  grows 
dizzy  in  thinking  of  the  length  of  the  chain 
of  which  we  form  the  latest  link.  That 
palaeolithic  ancestor  of  ours,  whom  we  discern, 
rude,  unkempt,  groping  his  way  in  the  savage 
conditions  of  the  measureless  past — have  we 
any  affection,  any  filial  regard  for  him  ?  Yet 
it  is  on  him  we  hang.  Had  he  not  succeeded 
in  his  struggle,  kept  the  torch  of  life  burning, 
spite  of  every  adverse  gust,  and  handed  it,  still 
glowing,  to  the  one  who  came  next,  we  had 
not  been. 

After  our  arrival  we  are,  for  the  first  part 
entirely,  and  for  the  after  part  still  very 
largely,  recipients  and  absorbents.  Life's 
hoarded  capital  is  at  every  turn  being  lavished 
upon  us.  The  universe  flows  in  through 
myriad  open  gateways  of  the  soul,  leaving 


OUR   CONTRIBUTION   TO   LIFE.          155 

deposits  of  all  kinds  from  its  infinite  store- 
houses. We  gulp  the  present  and  the  past. 
All  the  histories,  all  the  literatures  work  at  us. 
We  may  not  have  read  them,  but  they  create 
the  atmosphere  we  breathe.  The  agonies  of 
martyrs,  the  struggles  of  patriots,  the  visions 
of  seers,  the  achievements  of  science,  the 
products  of  adventure,  help  to  swell  the 
revenues  we  draw.  In  fact,  there  is  no  arith- 
metic can  calculate  the  cost  in  thought,  in 
effort,  in  suffering,  in  all  that  constitutes  the 
ultimate  values,  that  has  gone  to  the  equip- 
ment of  the  humblest  of  us  alive  to-day. 

That  is  one  side  of  this  marvellous  book- 
keeping. Not  less  remarkable  is  the  other.  We 
discover,  as  we  study  it,  that  the  capitalist  we 
have  to  deal  with,  lavish  though  he  be,  is  no 
aimless  spendthrift.  He  looks  for  a  return,  and 
insists  upon  getting  it.  Nothing  is  more  won- 
derful than  the  way  in  which  this  demand  utters 
itself,  the  way  in  which  we  are  singled  out  and 
sent  off  to  our  particular  spell  of  work.  It  is 
as  though  the  heavens  were  opened  and  our 
names  called.  Out  of  our  desires  and  our  will- 
power, out  of  our  circumstances,  out  of  the 
impinging  upon  us  of  the  unexpected,  out  of 
our  successes,  blunders  and  calamities,  there 


156       OURSELVES   AND   THE  UNIVEBSE. 

emerges,  as  the  years  go  on,  a  something,  form- 
less, mysterious,  unreckonable,  which,  never- 
theless, awed  and  wondering,  we  begin  to 
understand  as  our  Contribution  to  Life. 

Formless  and  unreckonable  we  say,  for  we 
are  at  the  furthest  remove  from  any  clear  com- 
prehension of  what  our  output  amounts  to  in 
the  sum  of  things.  We  have  no  proper  gauge 
of  the  importance  of  this  or  that.  Do  we 
imagine  that  St.  Paul  ever  dreamed  that  his 
stray  correspondence,  written  at  the  white-heat 
of  the  moment,  addressed  to  the  passing  cir- 
cumstances of  a  given  time  and  place,  for- 
gotten, may  be,  by  himself,  as  our  own  often 
is,  when  the  pen  is  laid  down,  was  destined  to 
be  the  leading  part  of  a  sacred  book,  to  be 
regarded  as  the  storehouse  of  doctrine,  the 
centre  and  foundation  of  a  world's  faith  ! 
Often  it  is  what  the  man  himself  has  thought 
least  of  that  represents  his  largest  payment. 
Goethe  prided  himself  more  on  his  theory  of 
colours,  which  was  a  false  one,  than  on  his 
Faust.  How  little  did  Ken's  "  Evening  hymn  " 
and  Newman's  "  Abide  with  me  "  bulk  to  the 
writers  as  compared  with  the  sum  of  their  activi- 
ties and  their  interests  !  And  yet,  as  the  years 
roll  on,  it  seems  more  and  more  as  though  it 


OUR   CONTRIBUTION   TO  LIFE.          157 

were  to  write    these   hymns   that  these   men 
lived. 

But  surprises  of  this  kind  are  only  a  small 
part  of  the  matter.  The  marvellous  fortune 
of  a  Paul's  letters,  hidden  from  himself,  is 
visible  to  us.  But  the  greater  part  of  our 
contribution  to  life,  whether  it  be  that  of  an 
apostle  or  a  drayman,  is  hidden,  not  only 
from  us  and  our  contemporaries,  but  from  all 
posterity,  so  long  as  it  keeps  on  this  side  the 
veil.  In  trying  to  unravel  the  riddle  of  men's 
destiny  we  are  apt  to  catch  at  the  illumined 
and  splendid  points,  as  though  we  have  here  the 
explanation  of  the  parts  of  it  that  are  dark 
and  troubled.  It  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  Do 
we  find,  for  instance — to  take  a  stray  historical 
example — that  the  great  after  career  of  a  John 
Knox,  as  evangelist  and  reformer,  is  any 
sort  of  explanation  of  his  sombre  years  as  a 
Dominican  monk,  or  of  the  horrible  experi- 
ence when  he  toiled  as  a  slave  at  the  galleys  ? 
The  prosperity  of  one  period  of  life  or  of  one 
part  of  the  world  is  no  answer  concerning  the 
suffering  of  another  part.  That  so  large  a 
portion  of  our  contribution  to  life  takes  the 
form  of  sheer  endurance,  the  doing  of  things 
that  are  irksome  and  that  supply  no  visible 


158        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

reward,  demands  a  deeper  solution.  And 
there  is  surely  one  to  hand.  The  pessimistic 
interpretation  of  life  commits  the  mistake  of 
supposing  that  our  seemingly  unprofitable  and 
disastrous  experiences  have  been  transacted 
once  for  all;  that  this  is  their  final  form, 
about  which  nothing  more  is  to  be  done  but 
the  lamenting.  Whereas  all  the  probabilities 
are  that  such  experiences  have  only  begun 
their  history  ;  that  these  seeming  unprofit- 
ables  and  wearinesses  are  the  rough  out- 
lines, the  first  stages  in  a  series  of  immense 
transformations  and  results  that  are  yet  to  be 
revealed. 

It  is  only  along  that  line,  the  ancient  line  of 
faith,  that  we  are  able  to  make  any  satisfactory 
terms  with  our  past.  Viewed  in  this  light  our 
very  blunders  and  failures  receive  a  consecra- 
tion which  makes  us  at  peace  with  them.  The 
joy  we  missed  and  the  pain  that  came  instead 
are  seen  to  form  the  cross,  the  manful  bearing 
of  which  may  turn  out  to  be  our  chief,  preor- 
dained, contribution  to  life.  In  the  centre  of 
the  trial  stand  we,  glad  in  the  midst  of  it  to 
know  that  our  Commander  has  assigned  us  so 
difficult  a  post,  and  determined  that  the  trust 
reposed  in  us  shall  not  be  betrayed. 


OUR   CONTRIBUTION   TO   LIFE.          159 

When  I  was  young  I  deemed  that  sweets  are  sweet ; 
But  now  I  deem  some  searching  bitters  are 
Sweeter  than  sweets,  and  more  refreshing  far 
And  to  be  relished  more,  and  more  desired, 
And  more  to  be  pursued  on  eager  feet, 
On  feet  untired,  and  still  on  feet  tho'  tired. 

But  our  contribution  to  life  is  still  in 
progress ;  with  some  of  us  it  is  as  yet  only  a 
beginning.  What  form  the  unfulfilled  part 
of  it  is  to  take  is  a  secret ;  so  many  factors  that 
enter  into  it  are  hidden  from  us.  Yet  of  one 
factor  we  can  make  sure,  and  that  is  our  own 
will.  No  combination  of  all  the  natural  forces 
in  the  planet  can  vie  for  one  moment  with  the 
potentialities  of  the  human  volition.  In  its 
secret  chamber  we  can  forge  destinies.  The 
combination  of  freedom  and  necessity  that 
goes  on  there  is  a  mystery  we  shall  probably 
never  explain.  The  nearest  approach  to  it, 
perhaps,  is  in  the  formula  of  Hegel :  "  It  is  only 
as  we  are  in  ourselves  that  we  can  develop 
ourselves,  yet  is  it  we  ourselves  that  develop 
ourselves."  Despite  the  dense  sophistical  webs 
that  have  been  woven  round  this  subject  man 
has  always  believed  in  his  freedom.  Plutarch  well 
represents  this  age-long  faith  when,  speaking 
of  Homer,  he  says,  "  The  poet  never  introduces 
the  Deity  as  depriving  man  of  the  freedom  of 


160         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

the  will,  but  as  moving  the  will.  He  does  not 
represent  the  heavenly  power  as  producing  the 
resolution,  but  the  ideas  that  lead  to  the 
resolution." 

But  this  life-determining  power  to  be  of  any 
service  to  us  has  to  be  trained,  and  to  be 
reinforced.  The  supreme  human  achievement 
is  to  make  resolutions  and  to  keep  them.  If  a 
man  cannot  resolve  for  a  lifetime,  let  him 
resolve  for  one  day.  His  will-power  for  the 
morrow  will  be  perceptibly  stronger  for  the 
effort.  The  world's  emancipation,  its  advent 
to  an  earthly  paradise,  depends  not  on  the 
accumulation  of  capital,  but  on  the  rescue  of 
its  will-power  and  the  concentration  of  it  on 
noble  living.  Imagine  the  lift  toward  human 
felicity  if  this  magnificent  sentence  in  Tertullian 
were  made  into  a  fixed  resolve  :  "  To  wish  ill,  to 
do  ill,  to  speak  ill  or  to  think  ill  of  any  one  we 
are  equally  forbidden  without  exception." 

Here  is  a  contribution  to  life,  the  noblest 
conceivable,  which  we  can  every  one  make.  It 
may  not  be  ours  to  add  to  the  world's  wealth  by 
great  inventions  or  works  of  genius.  We  may 
be  prevented  from  doing  the  thing  we  had  most 
set  our  hearts  on.  But  in  one  direction  lies  a 
sphere  of  glorious  freedom.  It  is  that  of  help- 


OUR  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LIFE.         161 

ing  the  world  to  its  new,  its  Christian  temper. 
When  as  a  daily  discipline  we  resolutely 
crush  within  us  the  first  beginnings  of  unloving 
thought  towards  our  fellow,  when  we  help  him 
by  bathing  the  facts  of  each  day's  life  in  the 
radiant  atmosphere  of  our  own  faith,  when  by 
God's  grace  and  our  inner  struggle  we  have 
produced  that  noblest  and  most  delightful  of 
products,  a  richly  developed  inner  life,  we  shall 
have  taken  the  best  possible  means  of  paying 
back  our  debt.  The  world's  greatest  asset  is 
the  souls  it  is  producing.  Let  us  see  to  it  that 
our  own  becomes  a  worthy  addition. 


XVIII. 
The    Gospel   of    Law. 

THERE  are  few  subjects  about  which  people 
have  indulged  more  in  the  luxury  of  confused 
thinking  than  that  of  law  in  relation  to  religion. 
St.  Paul  has  something  to  do  with  this,  though 
the  blame  does  not  lie  at  his  door.  Men  have 
imagined  they  were  following  him  in  opposing 
law  to  grace,  in  making  law  the  antithesis  of 
gospel.  That  is  their  mistake  and  not  his. 
Paul  never  attempts  to  get  outside  law.  His 
gospel  is  full  of  it.  With  him  it  is  a  question, 
not  of  law  or  no  law,  but  of  higher  versus 
lower  law.  He  rises  above  the  Sinai  and 
Leviticus  sphere  in  the  same  way  that  the 
organic  rises  above  the  sphere  of  the  inorganic. 
The  higher  life  is  still  one  of  law.  It  takes,  in 
fact,  the  laws  of  the  region  from  which  it  has 
emerged  into  a  higher  synthesis,  where  it 
exhibits  them  in  new  forms,  with  higher 
potencies.  The  apostle  sums  all  this  in  his  one 
pregnant  statement :  "  For  the  law  of  the  Spirit 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LAW.  163 

of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  hath  made  me  free  from 
the  law  of  sin  and  death." 

The  idea  of  law  as  being  the  antithesis  of 
Gospel  has,  however,  in  recent  thinking, 
revived  under  some  new  forms.  It  has  been 
declared  on  high  authority,  and  in  more  than 
one  quarter,  that  the  great  system  of  law  which 
we  designate  as  Nature  contains  no  gospel  for 
man,  and  no  prophecy  of  one.  Professor 
Huxley  meant  this  when  he  affirmed,  in  his 
Romanes  lecture,  that  Nature  was  non-moral, 
and  that  human  ethics  were,  in  fact,  a  battle 
against  her  methods.  Modern  poetry,  too,  has 
painted  her  as  ruthless,  "red  in  tooth  and 
claw,"  while  there  have  not  been  wanting 
religious  teachers  who  proclam  that,  apart 
from  the  direct  revelation  in  Christ,  man  finds 
in  the  universe  no  suggestion  of  grace  or  love, 
no  hint  of  a  Heavenly  Father. 

It  is  worth  while  examining  whether  these 
things  are  so.  Some  of  us  read  Nature  very 
differently.  That  Christ's  revelation  is  the 
master-key  to  her  problem  we  entirely  believe. 
But  a  key,  to  be  of  any  use,  supposes  a  lock 
which  fits  it.  If  Nature  herself  is  not  full  of 
grace,  what  is  certain  is  that  Christ  misread 
her.  He  found  the  world  writ  all  over  with  the 


164        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

sign-manual  of  His  Father,  and  taught  us  that. 
"We  are  at  a  far  remove  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  Deistical  Tindal,  but  his  "  Christianity 
as  Old  as  the  Creation"  contains  after  all  a 
true  idea.  Christianity  is  largely  a  rendering  of 
what  was  in  Nature,  but  which  man  had  pre- 
viously failed  to  discern  there.  We  designate 
Nature  as  feminine,  and  truly.  For  she  is  full 
of  the  mother  element.  On  the  whole  subject 
Hooker  had  a  wider  outlook  than  some  of  the 
moderns,  when,  at  the  end  of  the  first  book  of 
his  "  Polity,"  he  gives  of  law,  as  discerned  in 
the  general  system  of  things,  this  magnificent 
description  :  "  Of  law  there  can  be  no  less 
acknowledged  than  that  her  seat  is  in  the 
bosom  of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the 
world;  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth  do  her 
homage,  the  very  least  as  feeling  her  care, 
and  the  greatest  as  not  exempted  from  her 
power." 

Law,  we  say,  is  full  of  grace.  In  its 
operations,  its  conditions,  its  promises,  its  per- 
formances, it  suggests  everywhere  what  we 
understand  by  Gospel.  A  man  proposes  to 
learn  swimming  or  cycling.  He  finds  himself 
immediately  in  contact  with  certain  laws. 
They  say  to  him,  "Believe^  obey,  and  accord- 


THE  GOSPEL  OP  LAW.  165 

ing  to  your  faith  it  shall  be  unto  you."  The 
neophyte,  if  he  be  nervous,  imagines  that  while 
other  men  in  this  matter  may  be  under  grace, 
he  is  certainly  singled  out  for  reprobation.  The 
laws  by  which  a  man  may  keep  at  the  top  of 
the  water  or  in  easy  equilibrium  on  the  saddle 
of  a  bicycle,  have  assuredly,  his  fears  suggest, 
a  statute  of  limitations  which  keeps  him  out. 
Let  him  trust  and  see.  He  learns  finally  that 
in  place  of  reprobation,  of  favouritism,  of  limita 
tion,  the  law  says  "  whosoever  will."  To  all- 
and  sundry,  to  rich  and  poor,  to  gentle  and 
simple,  to  wise  and  foolish,  to  good  and  bad, 
it  offers  without  restriction  all  its  largess  of 
service,  provided  only  it  is  believed  in  and 
obeyed. 

Granted,  we  are  told ;  but  then  there  is  the 
other  side.  What  of  the  man  who  disobeys, 
or  who  fails  to  learn  ?  What  Gospel  is  there 
in  Nature's  ruthlessness,  in  her  law  of  gravita- 
tion, when  it  smashes  a  man  at  the  foot  of  a 
precipice,  in  her  blind  rage  of  tempest  when 
the  howling  sea  swallows  a  shipload  of  shriek- 
ing creatures  within  sight  of  land?  What 
forgiveness  is  there  in  Nature,  what  escape 
from  the  chain  of  her  iron  necessity?  Our 
human  societies,  faiths  and  hopes,  are  they  not 


1GG  OlJESELVES   AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

a  protest  against  her,  rather  than  an  inspira- 
tion from  her  ? 

Softly,  and  one  thing  at  a  time.    Nature,  it 
is  true,  has  her  stern,  hard  side,  but  is  it  after 
all  as  stern  as  it  is  often  painted  ?     Expertis 
crede.     Some  of  us  have  actually  been  as  near 
death  by  foundering,  or  by  precipice  smash  as 
could  well  be,  without  the  actual  experience- 
near  enough  to  know  what   the    immediately 
previous   sensation  would   be   like,  and    have 
found   it  not   nearly   so  bad  as  the  outsider 
might  picture.     A  famous  Alpine  climber  has 
described  his  feeling  when,  having  missed  his 
footing,  he  found  himself  dropping  from  one 
rock  to  another  down  a  precipitous   descent. 
He  felt  certain  of  being   killed,  but  his    one 
mental  occupation   during   the  operation  was 
the  calculation  as  to  how  many  bumps  it  would 
take  to  finish    him.     Such    experiences,  be  it 
also  remembered,  are  the  great  exceptions  of 
life,   and  they    are    soon    over.     "The   black 
minute's  at  end  "  before  there  is  time  to  worry 
much  over  it.     With  animals,  where  Nature's 
slaughter  is  on  the  greatest  scale,  both  pain  and 
worry  are  at  a  minimum.     Besides,  suffering 
and  death  are  a  part  of  the  scheme  of  revela- 
tion, as  well  as  of  Nature  pure  and  simple.    If 


THE  GOSPEL  OP  LAW.  167 

any  odium  attaches  to  them  it  must  be  shared 
by  one  as  well  as  the  other. 

But  Nature,  it  is  said,  differs  from  Gospel  in 
her  doctrine  of  non-forgiveness.  We  are  at  a 
loss  to  know  how  this  notion  arises.  Rather 
should  we  affirm  that  Nature  forgives  royally, 
unto  seventy  times  seven.  Nothing,  on  the 
whole,  is  more  astonishing  than  the  way  she 
bears  with  wrongdoers.  Generations  of  men 
will  go  on  violating  her  laws  and  yet  survive. 
She  mothers  them  and  keeps  them  going  some- 
how, spite  of  their  frightful  heresies  in  food, 
and  air  and  exercise,  and  a  thousand  things. 
They  break  each  other's  bones  or  spill  each 
other's  blood.  Straightway  the  great  Nurse 
is  busy  with  them,  working  with  her  vis  medi- 
catriz  at  their  wounds,  weaving  new  tissues, 
deftly  joining  what  has  been  sundered,  and 
giving  up  never  while  a  chance  remains. 

Men  talk  of  the  dire  inevitableness  of  heredity. 
Nature  herself  makes  not  nearly  so  much  fuss 
about  it  as  some  modern  professors.  Gutter 
children,  heirs  of  generations  of  vice,  who, 
according  to  the  prevailing  doctrine,  should  be 
irrevocably  damned,  body  and  soul,  are  daily 
taken  out  of  the  streets  of  London  and  put  into 
new  conditions,  by  which  their  entail  of  ruin  is 


168        OCJKSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEESB. 

cut  off.  Transplanted  to  Canada  or  some  other 
region  of  open  air  and  hard  work,  they  slough 
off  their  legacy  of  heredity  and  develop  into 
wholesome  farmers  and  citizens.  Man's 
recoverableness  from  seemingly  desperate  con- 
ditions is,  in  fact,  the  wonder  and  the  lesson  of 
history.  When  we  read  of  the  early  triumphs 
of  Christianity ;  how,  out  of  the  inconceivable 
vileness  of  the  society  of  the  time,  there  arose, 
in  Rome,  in  Ephesus,  in  Corinth,  the  Divine 
character  described  in  the  letters  of  Paul  or  in 
the  Epistle  to  Diognetus,  we  think  of  all  this, 
and  rightly,  as  a  marvel  of  grace.  But  not  less 
is  it  a  marvel  of  Nature.  Leaven,  however 
good,  could  not  make  bread  out  of  a  stone. 
The  new  force  could  only  operate  through  the 
power  of  response  in  the  raw  material.  Men 
became  Christlike  because  they  were  ante- 
cedently capable  of  becoming  so.  The  greatest 
spiritual  victories  the  world  has  known  are 
equally  victories  of  natural  law. 

Any  other  theory  is,  in  short,  logically  un- 
thinkable. The  universe  has  no  antinomies  of 
nature  and  grace.  The  one  works  through  the 
other.  The  humanity  which  has  evolved  ethics 
—more,  which  has  evolved,  because  of  having 
first  received,  Divinity — has  done  and  won  all 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LAW. 


this  through  Nature,  and  no  otherwise.  Out  of 
the  one  force,  which  fashioned  and  keeps  the 
visible  world,  which  gives  us  the  blasts  of 
winter  and  the  infinite  grace  of  spring,  which 
evolved  from  lower  types  the  human  form,  and 
lifted  us  from  brute  to  man,  from  this  has  come 
also  the  capacity  for  the  spiritual  and  then  the 
spiritual  itself.  Revelation  in  its  forms  of  in- 
tuition, of  Prophet,  of  Christ,  of  Spirit,  is  the 
working  of  the  One  Divinity  immanent  in 
every  part  and  portion  of  the  visible  as  of  the 
invisible  universe.  The  laws  of  that  universe 
are  everywhere  permanent,  and  trustworthy, 
and  good  simply  because  they  are  God's 
habits,  the  expression  of  His  character. 


XIX. 
Life's    Healing    Forces. 

IN  that  creed  of  experience  which  people,  by 
the  time  of  middle  age,  have  generally  built  up 
for  themselves,  a  central  article  will,  with  most 
of  them,  we  fancy,  be  a  conviction  of  the 
immense  healing  power  hidden  away  in  every 
department  of  the  world's  life  and  available  for 
every  circumstance  of  it.  For  some  of  us  who 
have  reached  the  "  grand  climacteric,"  or  are 
beyond  it,  the  reflection  that  we  are  alive  at  all 
is  a  source  of  constant  astonishment,  while  the 
consciousness  that  we  are  happy  is  yet  more 
wonderful.  It  is  the  men  and  women  who 
have  been  well  knocked  about  who  are  most 
sensible  of  nature's  marvellous  doctoring. 
When  we  have  had  the  body  laid  low  by  all 
manner  of  ailments  and  yet  have  survived; 
when  fate's  ploughshare  has  gone  clean  through 
one  after  another  of  our  most  cherished  pro- 
jects, to  leave  us,  as  we  discover  afterwards, 
not  one  penny  the  worse  j  when,  after  our  in- 


LIFE'S  HEALING  FORCES.  171 

most  affections  have  been  smitten  by  shattering 
bereavements,  we  rise  from  the  blow  not  only 
still  loving,  but  still  enjoying,  we  become  con- 
scious, as  no  tyro  or  mere  surface  skimmer  can, 
of  a  vis  medicatrix  naturce,  of  a  vast  system 
and  force  of  healing,  spread  through  the  whole 
constitution  of  things,  which  becomes  hence- 
forth one  of  our  most  delightful  and  most  in- 
structive studies. 

Apart  from  its  great  speculative  outlooks,  to 
which  we  shall  come  presently,  the  subject  is, 
we  say,  for  itself  most  pleasant  to  linger  over. 
Is  there  anything  in  the  world  so  tender,  so 
entirely  motherly,  as  that  caress  with  which 
Nature,  when  we  are  sick  or  overwrought,  woos 
us  back  to  strength?  Eobust  health  is  very 
well  in  its  way,  but  there  is  a  subtle  happiness 
it  does  not  know.  It  is  that  tasted  by  the  man 
of  nervous  organisation  when,  strained  to  ex- 
haustion point,  he  flies  for  recovery  to  his 
healer ;  when,  away  on  the  sea,  or  meeting  the 
keen  breeze  of  the  moorland,  he  knows  that 
every  breath  he  draws,  every  glint  of  the 
open  heaven,  every  bit  of  scenery  his  eye 
rests  on,  every  moment  of  the  delicious 
resting-time,  is  forming  part  of  one  great 
system  of  beneficence  that  is  working  to  make 


172        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

him  well.  One  might  expatiate,  too,  on 
Nature's  surgery ;  how,  when  the  bodily 
economy  is  broken  in  upon  by  sword-cut  or 
bullet-wound,  she  immediately  summons  her 
forces  to  the  point  attacked  ;  how  there  she 
commences  a  process  of  stanching,  of  spinning 
and  weaving  of  tissues,  of  expulsion  of  dan- 
gerous matter,  and  building  up  of  new  and 
healthy  substance,  all  in  a  way  so  wonderful 
and  masterly.  Not  less  beautiful  is  her 
manner  of  handling  wounds  of  the  mind  and 
heirt.  When  in  our  grief  we  refuse  to  be 
comforted,  and  put  joy  from  us  as  something 
forbidden,  she  waits,  and  gently  insists  until 
we  smile  again.  Tourgenieff's  statement  of  the 
difference  between  youth  and  age — that  "  youth 
will  eat  gilt  gingerbread  and  fancy  it  is  daily 
bread,  too ;  but  a  time  comes  when  you're  in 
want  of  dry  bread  even,"  is  one  of  those  ex- 
aggerations which  are  the  bane  of  antithesis. 
Nature  is  kinder  than  this.  The  after-life 
affords  us  dry  bread  and  something  more.  The 
middle-aged  world  has  had  wounds  enough  of 
body  and  mind  to  kill  it  a  dozen  times  over ; 
but  it  is  alive  and  cheerful ;  it  has  found  heal 
ing  for  its  hurts. 

But  we   may  launch  out  now   a    little  and 


LIFE'S  HEALING  FORCES.  173 

touch,  cautiously,  one  or  two  of  those  specula- 
tive points  to  which  this  topic  directly  invites. 
The  first  of  these  is  the  question,  "  How  far  do 
these  remedial  agencies  go  ?  Is  there,  in  the 
realm  either  of  the  material  or  of  the  spiritual, 
anything  that  is  irremediable  ? "  One  of  the 
most  impressive  features,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, of  "  Butler's  Analogy  "  is  his  conception 
of  Nature's  teaching  of  the  irremediable. 
Courses  of  conduct  relating  both  to  body  and 
mind  that  contravene  her  laws  may,  up  to  a 
certain  point,  be  condoned,  and  their  evil 
results  averted ;  carried  beyond  that  point,  their 
penalty  is  utter  ruin.  This,  he  says,  is  true  of 
the  physical  body,  where  the  sentence  is  death, 
and  of  communities  and  nations,  where  the 
judgment  is  final  destruction.  And  the  ana- 
logies here  from  the  present  life,  he  argues, 
may  be  taken  to  hold  of  the  life  to  come. 

We  doubt  whether,  if  Butler  had  lived  in  our 
day,  he  would  have  been  so  ready  with  this 
particular  argument.  For  he  would  have  had 
to  take  into  consideration  the  fact,  of  which 
modern  science  and  the  modern  philosophy  of 
history  are  continually  reminding  us — that  the 
final  judgments  on  which  he  lays  so  much 
stress  are,  after  all,  not  finalities;  that  the 


174        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

destructions,   when    looked    into,    are    not    so 
much  destructions  as  healings.    Of  the  national 
"days    of    judgment"  few    have   been    more 
impressive  in  their  apparent  hopelessness  than 
the  fall  of  the  Jewish  State  under  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, and  its  after  and  completer  destruction 
by  the  Eomans  under  Titus.     But   we    now 
realise  that  to  the  former  the  Jews  owed  their 
highest    conception    of    God,    their     greatest 
literature,  in  short,  their  spiritual  selves ;  while 
to  the  latter,  with  its  consequent  dispersion  of 
the  race  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  we  trace 
the  immense  world-wide   Judaic   influence  of 
to-day.     The   "  destruction "   was,   in  fact,  a 
remedy.     When  Augustine    penned   his   "  De 
Civitate  Dei"   the   shadow  of  the  impending 
Vandal  invasion  was  already  over  his  beloved 
North  Africa,  and  the  Roman  State  was  every- 
where   crashing    into    hideous    ruin.     It  was 
natural    that    he,    with    the    other    Christian 
thinkers  of  the  time,  should  see  here  the  final 
doom  of   the  world-powers;  the  coming  cata- 
strophe in  which  everything  outside  the  Catholic 
Church  was  to  perish.    We,  who  are  on  the 
farther  side  of  these  events,  judge  them  differ- 
ently.    The  old  Rome  fell,  it  is  true,  but  it 
died  only  to  rise  again — to  rise  in  a  dozen  new 


LIFE'S  HEALING   FORCES.  175 

and  vigorous  communities,  who  in  their  laws, 
their  institutions  and  their  spirit,  inherited 
what  of  it  was  fitted  to  live.  Kome's  day  of 
judgment  was  neither  a  ruin  nor  a  finality.  It 
was,  again,  a  remedy. 

May  we  not  say  the  same  of  death  itself? 
On  the  physical  side  it  is  Nature's  way  out  of 
an  impossible  situation.  It  is  her  heroic 
surgery.  When  the  forces  of  disease  have 
prevailed  against  her  ordinary  methods  of 
healing,  she  dissolves  in  this  way  a  combina- 
tion that  has  become  simply  painful.  Nothing 
has  been  destroyed.  What  has  happened  is 
that  the  arrangement  of  particles  round  a 
hopelessly  weakened  centre  has  come  to  an 
end,  leaving  these  particles  free  for  a  new  and 
sounder  grouping.  And  even  in  this,  the 
harshest  of  her  processes,  it  is  wonderful  to 
observe  Nature's  tenderness.  In  a  recently- 
published  German  work,  which  has  gone 
through  eight  editions,  "Vom  Zustande  des 
Menschen  kurz  vor  dem  Tode,"  the  author, 
Professor  Hornemann,  gives  a  scientific 
analysis  of  the  experiences  of  the  dying.  He 
declares  that  the  "  death  agony "  is  painful 
to  the  spectator  rather  than  to  the  patient; 
that  the  sense  of  dread  of  death  which  haunts 


176        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 


so  many  during  life  almost  invariably  dis- 
appears at  its  actual  approach ;  that,  in  fact,  as 
is  shown  by  the  testimonies  of  people  brought 
back  from  the  verge  of  the  grave,  a  special 
consciousness  of  remarkable  calm  and  peace 
is  a  normal  experience  of  the  closing  hour. 
From  beginning  to  end,  and  even  through 
what  we  call  the  "end,"  Nature  appears  ever 
as  the  healer. 

But  having  come  so  far  we  must  go  farther. 
We  are  confronted  now  with  the  question, 
"What  bearing  has  all  this  upon  spiritual 
disease,  and  specially  upon  the  Christian 
doctrines  of  sin,  redemption,  and  the  future  ?  " 
We  must  remind  ourselves,  to  begin  with,  that 
Christianity  contemplates  man's  spiritual  his- 
tory as,  throughout,  a  pathology.  It  considers 
him  as  morally  infect.  It  starts  with  the 
doctrine  of  a  Fall.  The  science  of  the  sixties, 
we  remember,  hotly  joined  issue  at  this  point 
with  religion,  declaring  that  Evolution  knew 
nothing  of  a  fall,  but  only  of  a  perpetual  rise. 
It  forgot,  what  it  has  since  thought  of,  that 
there  might  be  such  a  thing  as  a  fall  upwards, 
a  fall  as  part  of  the  process  of  rising.  Indeed, 
when,  according  to  Pascal's  famous  analogy, 
we  consider  the  whole  race  as  a  single  human 


LIFE'S  HEALING  FOECES.  177 

being  perpetually  growing  and  perpetually 
learning,  we  realise  that  some  such  event  is 
exactly  what  we  should  expect.  In  the  history 
of  every  child  a  moral  tumble  is  part  of  its 
process  of  inner  growth.  Beginning  on  the 
purely  animal  plane,  with  physical  instincts  in 
place  of  moral  perceptions,  it  gradually 
evolves  the  moral  sense  and  with  it  the 
capacity  of  sinning.  Its  first  spiritual  failure 
is  thus  at  once  a  rise  and  a  fall. 

The  line  of  thought  here  opened  points  to 
more  than  a  reconciliation  between  physical 
science  and  Christian  theology,  though  that 
is  something.  In  the  minds  which  it  fairly 
enters  it  will  react  with  immense  effect  on 
the  shaping  of  the  theology  itself.  It  will, 
for  instance,  influence  our  whole  conception  of 
evil,  both  as  to  its  nature  and  its  final 
results.  While  not  dogmatising  about  evil,  or 
pretending  fully  to  understand  it;  while 
avoiding,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Neoplatonic 
optimism  which  regarded  it  as  merely  a  not- 
being,  the  necessary  foil  of  the  good,  the 
shadow  of  the  light,  "  the  transitoriness  cleaving 
to  the  many  in  opposition  to  the  one  "  ;  and  on 
the  other  the  pessimism,  orthodox  and  un- 
orthodox, which  has  made  evil  a  hopeless 

12 


178        OURSELVES  A^TO  THE  UNIVEESE. 

blackness  that  must  for  ever  cloud  the 
universe,  we  do  at  least  along  this  line  of  inves- 
tigation come  across  some  rays  of  light.  When 
we  see  in  the  physical  world  a  system  of  diseases 
kept  in  check  by  a  ubiquitous  counter  system 
of  remedial  powers,  and  this  carefully  limited 
action  positively  used  as  one  of  the  great  moral 
educators  of  the  race,  we  may  well  ask  whether 
a  similar  thing  may  not  be  predicated  of  man's 
spiritual  condition.  Without  going  the  length 
of  the  daring  "  peccando  promeremur  "  of  some 
early  Christian  thinkers,  we  may,  at  least, 
with  St.  Paul,  believe  in  the  abounding  of 
"grace  over  sin";  believe  even  that  the 
action  and  reaction,  in  this  sphere  of  evil 
and  its  remedy,  will  produce  some  high  result 
impossible  without  it,  but  as  yet  not  ascertain- 
able  by  us. 

We  have  touched  here  the  merest  fringe  of 
an  immense  subject.  We  have  said  nothing  of 
the  factors  in  this  system  of  spiritual  healing ; 
of  the  Cross  which  is  its  centre  j  of  the  vicarious 
suffering  which  is  its  principle ;  of  the  myriad 
human  ministries  by  which  that  principle  is 
applied.  It  is  enough  to  have  emphasized  the 
fact  that  the  human  sickness  of  body  and  soul 
is  no  ground  for  despair,  but  rather  for  hope. 


LIFE'S  HEALING  FORCES.  179 

It  is  something  if  we  can  believe  that  the 
world's  evil  is  not  irremediable  ;  that  for  its 
diseases  there  are  remedies ;  that  in  these  very 
diseases  themselves  may  be  discerned  an 
ulterior  purpose  of  good. 

But  hush  !    For  you  can  be  no  despair : 
There's  amends  !    'Tis  a  secret ;  hope  and  pray. 


XX. 
Of  Fear    in    Religion. 

THE  point  is  often  discussed  whether  the  com- 
parative absence  from  the  modern  pulpit  of 
those  appeals  to  fear  characteristic  of  the 
earlier  evangelism  has  not  militated  against 
its  power.  The  question  here  opened  is 
one  that  has  to  be  faced  afresh  by  this 
generation.  Under  the  reaction  caused  by 
the  crudities  and  falsities  connected  with 
earlier  presentations  of  judgment  and  punish- 
ment there  has  been  a  disposition  to  give  the 
whole  subject  a  wide  berth.  But  this  can 
never  be  a  permanent  attitude.  The  Church, 
as  trustee  of  the  human  spiritual  interests, 
cannot  afford  to  be  in  two  minds  on  the 
question,  still  less  to  have  no  mind  at  all. 
And  there  is  no  reason  for  such  a  position. 
The  Christian  consciousness,  in  its  fuller  de- 
velopment, has  attained  to  a  view  of  God,  the 
soul  and  the  world  sufficiently  precise  to  enable 
it  to  pronounce  here  with  perfect  clearness 


OF  FEAB   IN   RELIGION.  181 

The  preacher  of  to-day,  awake  to  the  spiritual 
revelation  that  is  going  on  around  him,  should 
have  no  difficulty  and  no  hesitancy  about  the 
place  he  assigns  to  fear  as  one  of  the  religious 
working  forces. 

In  endeavouring  to  ascertain  what  that 
place  is,  it  may  be  well  to  begin  with  a  glance 
backward.  Man's  earliest  impressions  of  reli- 
gion carried  with  them  undoubtedly  a  large 
element  of  terror.  Timor  fecit  Deos,  "  fear  made 
the  Gods,"  says  Statius,  and  the  statement  has 
its  truth.  The  sense  that  he  was  in  the 
hands  of  vast  unknown  powers,  which  might 
at  any  time  become  fatally  hostile  to  him,  was 
the  impression  on  the  savage  which  first  drove 
him  to  prayer  and  sacrifice.  The  gleam  of 
the  lightning,  the  roar  of  the  thunder,  were  to 
him  certain  indications  of  supernal  wrath.  In 
religion  terror  came  first  and  love  last.  Every- 
where in  the  early  world,  as  in  the  primitive 
races  which  represent  it  to-day,  the  feeling 
seems  to  have  been  that  man's  fate  was  in  the 
hands  of  hostile  rather  than  benevolent  powers, 
and  that  his  pressing  business  was  to  placate 
them,  or  protect  himself  from  them.  The 
Dyaks  of  to-day,  after  an  illness,  change  their 
names  so  that  the  demon  who  sent  it  may  not 


182  OUESELVES   AND    THE   UNIVERSE. 

recognise  them  and  continue  his  persecutions. 
Modern  anthropology  is  full  of  similar  illustra- 
tions. The  latter  Pagan  philosophy  both  of 
Greece  and  Rome  reached  what  it  conceived 
to  be  its  highest  achievement  in  ridding  the 
mind  of  these  fears.  Lucian  turns  them  into 
a  jest ;  while  perhaps  the  best  quoted  line  in 
all  Roman  literature  describes  "the  happy 
man "  as  "  he  who  could  put  all  fears  and 
inexorable  fate  under  his  feet." 

But  the  element  of  fear  which  classic  philo- 
sophy sought  to  eliminate  came  back  into  the 
world  through  Christianity.  The  New  Testa- 
ment does  not  hesitate  to  strike  this  note. 
What  it  had  in  view  in  so  doing  we  will 
discuss  later.  Nowhere,  however,  did  the 
primitive  Church  conception  suffer  more  from 
that  "  secondary  Christianity,"  to  use  Harnack's 
expressive  phrase,  which  eventually  flooded 
Christendom  with  the  old  Paganism  under  a 
new  name,  than  in  the  later  ecclesiastical  use 
of  terror.  For  long  centuries  the  prevailing 
conception  of  the  spiritual  powers  was 
demonic.  God  was  demonic  as  well  as  Satan. 
He  was  taught  as  capable  of  inflicting  endless 
physical  tortures  on  little  children,  on  beings 
powerless  to  resist,  and  of  using  the  Devil  and 


OF  FEAR  IN  RELIGION.  183 


his  angels  as  willing  henchmen  in  the  business. 
It  is  a  symptom  of  the  essential  healthiness  of 
the  normal  mind  that  at  heart  the  people  never 
believed  in  these  horrors.  Anyone  who  reads 
the  old  mystery-plays  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in 
which  the  traditional  hell,  with  its  devils,  was 
made  the  subject  of  the  coarsest  burlesque, 
must  feel  that  there  was  no  sense  of  reality 
here  either  to  terrify  or  restrain.  And  this 
revolt  steadily  grew.  Rabelais,  who  represented 
one  large  note  of  the  Renaissance,  treats  hell 
quite  in  the  manner  of  Lucian.  The  lesson  of 
history  here  should  surely  suffice.  It  shows 
that  appeals  to  fear  of  this  type,  whether  under 
a  pagan  or  a  Christian  name,  lead  only  to 
cynicism  and  unbelief. 

Apart  from  history  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness, where  it  is  allowed  full  play,  makes  it  for 
ever  impossible  to  use  the  mediaeval  conception 
of  hell  as  an  appeal  to  fear.  What  forbids  it 
is  the  New  Testament  conception  of  God.  The 
supreme  Gospel  offered  there  to  man  is  that 
God  is  Love.  But  if  God  is  Love  anywhere  He 
is  Love  everywhere,  as  much  in  the  place  called 
hell  as  in  the  place  called  heaven ;  as  much  the 
moment  after  a  man's  death  as  the  moment 
before  it.  To  imagine  it  possible  that  because 


184  OURSELVES   AND   THE    UNIVERSE. 

the  breath  is  out  of  a  man's  body  the  Provi- 
dence which  hitherto  has  cherished  him  should 
suddenly  become  his  torturer,  with  mocking 
fiends  for  executioners,  is  as  reasonable  as  to 
suppose  that  a  mother,  because  her  child  has 
fallen  asleep,  should  straightway  cease  to  be  a 
mother  and  change  into  a  murderess.  The 
heart,  which  Schleiermacher  says  is  the  true 
theologian,  will  not  permit  such  conclusions  as 
these. 

But  what  of  the  New  Testament  appeal  to 
fear  ?  Is  not  the  book  full  of  warnings ;  is  not 
hell  in  its  list  of  contents ;  and  have  not  those 
preachers  and  those  Churches  been  most  suc- 
cessful who  have  most  insisted  on  this  side  of 
its  teaching  ?  If  we  answer  these  questions  in 
the  affirmative,  as  we  find  ourselves  compelled 
to  do,  where  is  the  reconciliation  between  such 
a  position  and  those  others  we  have  just  been 
urging  ?  It  is  well  that  such  demands  are  made 
on  us,  for  they  render  it  impossible  that  we 
should  remain  indifferent  or  negative.  They 
compel  us  to  a  solution. 

And  the  solution  is  not,  after  all,  far  to  seek. 
The  Christian  appeal  to  fear  finds  its  explana- 
tion, not  in  the  vindictive  character  of  God, 
but  in  the  stupendous  possibilities,  up  or 


OP  FEAR  IN   RELIGION.  185 

of  the  human  soul.  What  science  is  at  length 
tardily  recognising  has  lain  revealed,  all  these 
centuries,  upon  the  pages  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment— that  man  essentially  is  spirit ;  that  he 
belongs  to  an  unseen  order,  and  that  he  plays 
a  part  there  in  which  infinite  issues  are  involved. 
The  insistent  warning  note  of  the  Gospel  is 
that  man  is  making  or  marring  himself ;  that 
it  is  an  immense  and  wondrous  self  he  is  making 
or  marring ;  and  that  the  process  is  going  on 
now.  Heaven  and  hell  are  truly  in  this  busi- 
ness, for,  as  said  the  old  Persian  poet : 

Behold,  myself  am  heaven  and  hell. 

The  one  is  the  zenith  of  our  possible  spiritual 
fortunes,  as  the  other  is  the  nadir.  To-day  we 
are  weaving  the  structure  we  are  henceforth  to 
inhabit.  The  profound  speculations  of  Ulrici 
in  his  Leib  und  Seele,  where  he  conceives  the 
thoughts,  volitions  and  actions  proceeding  from 
our  daily  inner  life  as  constructing  the  spiritual 
body  of  the  future,  are  entirely  in  a  line  with 
the  genius  both  of  modern  Science  and  of 
primitive  Christianity.  Surely  there  is  ground 
here  for  the  most  urgent  and  compelling  appeal 
that  one  man  can  make  to  another ;  ground  for 
utmost  awe  and  fear  lest  our  folly  should 


186        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

baulk  these  possibilities ;  lest  our  course  should 
be  towards  blindness  instead  of  to  the  heavenly 
vision ;  down  deathwards  instead  of  up  to  the 
ever  fuller  life ! 

Mingled  with  this  element  of  the  Christian 
fear  is  the  dread  of  offending  God.  We  have,  it 
is  hoped,  outgrown  that  precious  piece  of  theo- 
logical casuistry  which  argued  that  man's  sin, 
because  against  an  infinite  Being,  was  there- 
fore infinite,  and  demanded  an  infinite  punish- 
ment. It  was  forgotten,  surely,  in  this  syllo- 
gism that  an  infinite  God  would  have  an  infinite 
capacity  of  forgiveness.  The  theologians  here 
had  got  hold  of  infinity  by  the  wrong  end. 
What  holds  the  enlightened  conscience  of  to- 
day is  not  a  consideration  of  that  kind,  but  the 
thought  of  the  Love  which  it  sins  against,  and 
the  intimacy  with  the  Holiest  against  which 
sin  is  the  bar.  We  cannot  bear  the  thought  of 
that  Heart  being  smitten  with  our  ingratitude, 
of  that  Face  turned  away  in  grief  from  our 
shortcoming.  Jean  Ingelow  has  put  with  unsur- 
passable force  this  side  of  the  Christian  fear : 

Come,  lest  this  heart  should,  cold  and  cast  away, 
Die  ere  the  Guest  adored  she  entertain ; 

Lest  eyes  that  never  saw  Thine  earthly  day 
Should  miss  Thy  heavenly  reign. 


OF  FEAR  IN  RELIGION.  187 

Such  fear  will  also  react  on  our  whole  con- 
duct towards  others.  Everywhere  around  us 
we  see  spiritual  destinies  in  the  making,  souls 
on  the  upward  or  the  downward  way.  It  will 
be  impossible,  holding  such  convictions,  for  us 
to  be  indifferent  towards  them.  Bather  will 
the  Christian  fear  in  us  work  as  a  Divine  solici- 
tude for  their  inner  welfare,  impelling  us  to 
such  courses  of  life  as  shall  be  for  their  help 
and  not  their  hindrance.  And  thus  fear,  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  entered  as  first  and  lowest 
element  into  the  religious  concept,  comes  out, 
transmuted  by  love,  as  its  last  and  highest. 


XXI. 
Our  Moral  Variability. 

ONE  of   the   supreme  questions  concerning  a 
man's  character  is   that  of  the  range    of  its 
variation.     We  want  to  know  about  him  not 
simply  what  he  is  to-day,  but  what  he  may  be 
to-morrow.       He  is  never  in  one  stay,  but  is 
perpetually  passing  from  one  moral  grade    to 
another.    This  movement  will  be  within  certain 
limits.     A  correct  estimate  of  him  will  require 
that  we  know  these  limits,  and  that   we  are 
able  to  strike  the  middle  point  between  his  best 
and  his  worst.     But  a  closer  observation  will 
reveal  a  movement  not  only  of  the  man  within 
the  limits,  but  also  of  the  limits  themselves. 
And  here  a  curious  thing  is  to  be  noted.     In 
the    order    of   human    development   extremes 
meet.     For  the  two  points  of  least  variation 
are  at  the  bottom  and  the  top.     The  rudest 
savage  and  the  most  perfect  character  agree  in 
presenting  the  minimum  of  moral  variability. 
It  is  on  the  way  from  the  one  to  the  other  that 


OUR  MORAL  VARIABILITY.  189 

we  find  the  maximum  of  oscillation.  The  brute 
and  the  saint  can  each  be  reckoned  on  for  what 
they  will  do  under  certain  conditions.  The 
man  and  the  woman  between  these  points,  that 
is,  shall  we  say,  our  noble  selves,  are  the 
puzzling,  if  not  the  unknown,  quantity. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  anything  about  a  cha- 
racter, even  our  own,  until  it  has  been  put 
through  certain  tests.  Our  progress  through 
life  is  a  progress  from  one  astonishment  to 
another  at  the  vagaries  of  our  own  particular 
ego  under  the  continually  varying  conditions 
which  time  and  the  world  bring.  The  craft 
which  behaved  so  beautifully  when  sailing 
down  stream  reveals  quite  new  features  when 
the  swell  of  ocean  smites  it  and  a  sou'-wester  is 
on  the  beam.  To  take,  for  instance,  what  is 
now  almost  a  universal  experience,  the  test  of 
travel.  The  old  reproach  that  the  Anglo- 
Indian  dropped  his  Christianity  at  the  Cape  on 
the  voyage  out,  and  picked  it  up  again  there  on 
his  return  home,  is  to  some  extent  rolled  away ; 
but  are  we  quite  sure  how  our  staid  village 
churchwarden  is  going  to  behave  during  his 
fortnight  in  Paris  ?  The  Parisian  himself  will 
tell  you  that  the  reproach  of  debauchery 
brought  against  his  city  arises  from  the  con- 


190        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

duct,  not  of  its  regular  inhabitants,  but  of  the 
strangers  who  rush  through  its  dissipations 
and  then  go  home  to  gravely  denounce  Con- 
tinental immorality.  Certain  it  is  that  a 
change  of  sky  and  the  absence  of  home  cyno- 
sure and  restraint  is  a  test  that  will  surely  find 
a  man's  rotten  spot,  if  there  is  one. 

But  enormous  moral  variations  may  come 
without  our  stirring  a  step.  There  is  that 
arising  from  the  mere  movement  of  time.  In 
the  course  of  a  couple  of  years  a  growing  lad  or 
girl  will  often  slough  off  their  earlier  likeness 
and  take  on  something  quite  new.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  tells  how,  by  a  process  he 
could  not  explain,  he  found  himself  at  that 
period  changed  from  an  inveterate  shirker  of 
hard  work  into  a  patient  toiler,  wrestling  with 
all  his  force  to  get  the  best  out  of  himself.  He 
came  about  like  a  good  ship.  There  must  have 
been,  he  concludes,  a  Pilot  at  the  helm.  Every- 
one agrees,  also,  that  advancing  age  is  a  great 
modifier  of  the  morale,  though  in  what  way  and 
to  what  degree  are  matters  on  which  observers 
are  widely  at  issue.  A  medical  author  declared 
some  time  ago  that  the  moral  sentiments  dis- 
tinctly declined  with  the  advance  of  years. 
Montaigne,  too,  avers  that  "  old  age  sets  more 


OUR  MORAL  VARIABILITY.  191 


wrinkles  on  the  spirit  than  on  the  face,"  and 
that  there  belongs  to  it  "  a  ridiculous  care  for 
riches  after  the  use  of  them  is  forfeited,  besides 
more  envy,  injustice  and  malignity."  Fonte- 
nelle,  on  the  other  hand,  finds  there  the  period 
in  which  "  our  passions  are  calmed,  our  duties 
fulfilled  and  our  ambition  satisfied."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  old  age  is  the  day  of  judgment 
on  youth  and  manhood.  It  is  the  hell  or  the 
heaven  which  these  have  made  it. 

Perhaps  the  most  momentous  possibilities  of 
moral  variation,  both  for  good  or  ill,  lie  along  the 
line  of  our  human  fellowships.  The  impact  on 
us  of  another  soul  is  potent,  not  only  in  reveal- 
ing ourselves,  but  in  creating,  as  it  were,  a 
new  self.  There  seems  to  be  a  kind  of  spiritual 
chemistry  here,  which  from  two  combining 
elements  produces  a  fresh  something,  a  moral 
condition  which  was  not  there  before.  This 
power  of  the  character  to  blend  and  almost  to 
lose  itself  in  that  of  another  is  wonderfully 
illustrated  in  what  Montaigne,  to  quote  him 
again,  says  of  his  friendship  with  La  Boetie,  a 
friendship  which,  he  avers,  "  having  seized  all 
my  will,  induced  the  same  to  plunge  and  lose 
itself  in  his  ;  which  likewise  having  seized  alj 
his  will,  induced  it  to  plunge  and  lose  itself  iy 


192        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 


mine,  with  a  mutual  greed  and  with  a  like  con- 
currence." The  sublimest  examples  are  those 
where  neglected  and  demoralised  natures  are 
brought  into  contact  with  a  high  spiritual 
character,  and,  yielding  to  its  mysterious  force, 
begin  straightway  to  form  after  that  likeness. 
This,  with  what  is  implied  in  it,  and  with 
what  lies  back  of  it,  is  our  divinest  guarantee 
of  human  improvability. 

But  the  variation  through  companionship 
has  also  its  sinister  side.  The  meeting  of  the 
strong  with  the  weak  is  too  often  the  wreck  of 
the  latter's  moral  equilibrium.  Arthur  Clough 
has  given  us  on  this  point  one  of  his  subtlest 
studies  where,  in  that  fine  poem,  "  The 
Bothie,"  he  delineates  the  special  danger  of  a 
girl  of  the  humbler  class  when  solicited  by  "  a 
gentleman."  The  peril  is  that  the  sense  of 
class  helps  to  confuse  the  moral  standard. 

To  the  prestige  of  the  richer  the  lowly  are  prone  to  be 

yielding ; 
Think  that  in  dealing  with  them  they  are  raised  to  a 

different  region, 
Where  old  laws  and  morals  are  modified,  lost,  exist 

not ; 
Ignorant  they  as  they   are,  they  have  but  to  conform 

and  be  yielding. 

Certain  temperaments  have  more  to  struggle 


OUR  MORAL  VARIABILITY.  193 

against  than  others  in  the  matter  of  moral 
oscillation  ;  and  of  these  most  of  all,  it  would 
seem,  the  artistic  and  the  poetic.  We  are  not 
in  a  position  to  properly  adjudicate  upon  the 
aberrations  of  genius.  We  cannot  compare  the 
immense  swing  backwards  at  times  of  a  Burns 
or  a  Heine  with  the  moral  equanimity  of  the 
placid  burgher  who  stumps  with  undeviating 
pace  along  his  turnpike.  It  is  the  climbers 
who  are  in  danger  of  the  abyss.  Must  we  not, 
for  instance,  forgive  something,  perhaps  a 
good  deal,  on  this  account,  to  that  most 
dazzling  of  artists  and  of  rascals,  Benvenuto 
Cellini  ?  It  was  surely  not  hypocrisy,  but 
partly  the  madness  of  his  time  and  partly 
the  madness  of  his  artist  blood,  which  made 
him  capable  now  of  quoting  St.  Paul  and 
discoursing  eloquently  of  heaven,  and  anon  of 
plunging  his  dagger  into  a  rival  and  boast- 
ing of  the  deed!  The  extraordinary  thing, 
indeed,  about  those  times,  and  of  some  later 
ones,  is  that  men  were  capable  of  what  seem  to 
us  the  most  monstrous  inconsistencies  without 
apparently  themselves  discerning  in  them  any 
moral  incongruity.  What  a  picture  is  this, 
for  instance,  which  Horace  Walpole  gives  us  of 

what  he  saw  in  the  Chapel  Eoyal  at  Versailles  : 

13 


194        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

"  There  was  Mme.  du  Barry,  the  King's  reign- 
ing mistress,  close  to  the  altar  ;  her  husband's 
sister  was  with  her.  In  the  tribune  above, 
surrounded  by  prelates,  was  the  amorous  and 
still  handsome  King."  The  piety,  the  pomp, 
and  the  carnality  seemed  to  everybody  appar- 
ently to  go  perfectly  well  together.  We  are 
by  no  means  all  we  should  be  to-day,  but  we 
have,  at  any  rate,  progressed  to  the  point  of 
being  able  to  see  some  difference  between 
these  things. 

But  with  the  best  of  us,  with  those  who  have 
been  diligently  using  every  means,  human  and 
superhuman,  for  inward  advance,  there  re- 
mains a  disheartening  consciousness  of  moral 
variability.  A  sleepless  night,  an  excess  of 
mental  exertion,  will  make  us  uncertain  in 
temper.  The  strangest  reactions  come.  We 
have  heard  a  preacher  say  that  he  felt  him- 
self a  mere  Pagan  on  Monday  morning. 
Amiel  notes,  as  Browning  has  done,  the 
advent  of  spring  as  waking  up  every  kind  of 
desire.  "II  fait  tressaillir  le  moine  dans 
Vonibre  de  son  couvent,  la  merge  derriere  les 
rideaux  de  sa  chambrette."  Worthy  people  on 
whose  general  charity  and  probity  we  can 
always  count,  seem  as  to  their  tempers  to  be 


OUR  MORAL  VARIABILITY.  195 

possessed  at  times  by  two  totally  different 
spirits,  whose  successive  entrance  or  exit 
changes  the  whole  set  and  shape  of  the 
features,  the  light  in  the  eye,  the  quality  of 
the  voice. 

It  will  be  the  mark  of  a  growing  inward 
life  that  with  an  ever-widening  range  of 
knowledge,  feeling,  and  capacity,  our  area  of 
moral  variation  steadily  diminishes.  More  and 
more  the  central  governing  force  of  our  life 
will  hold  us  to  itself.  Outward  circumstance 
of  every  kind  will  lose  power  to  confuse  and  to 
upset.  People  will  know  with  an  increasing 
certainty  where  to  look  for  us  in  the  spiritual 
realm.  The  only  movement  they  will  learn  to 
anticipate  will  be  a  movement  upwards.  What 
is  possible  in  this  sphere  is  expressed  for  us  in 
a  way  that  can  hardly  be  surpassed  in  the 
eulogium  which  the  sceptic  Gibbon  passed  on 
the  mystic  William  Law,  who  spent  some 
years  as  tutor  in  his  father's  house  at  Putney  : 
"  In  our  family  William  Law  left  the  reputa- 
tion of  a  man  who  believed  all  that  he  pro* 
fessed,  and  practised  all  that  he  enjoined." 


XXII. 
The  Escape  from  Commonplace. 

THERE  is  the  story  of  a  man  of  leisure  who 
found  his  future — an  endless  vista,  as  it 
seemed,  of  days  in  which  he  would  go  through 
exactly  the  same  round  of  getting  up,  dressing, 
feeding,  and  going  to  bed  again — too  appal- 
ling in  its  monotony,  and  so  escaped  from  it  by 
suicide.  In  such  a  position  we  could  sympa- 
thise with  his  feeling  if  we  did  not  proceed  to 
his  extremity.  One  of  the  greatest  of  human 
burdens  is  the  sense  of  being  imprisoned  by 
the  commonplace.  A  man  spends  his  working 
day  in  making  the  eighth  part  of  a  pin,  or  in 
totting  up  columns  of  figures,  or  in  selling 
calico.  His  wife,  meanwhile,  is  occupied  with 
an  incessant  cooking,  cleaning  and  arranging, 
which  has  all  to  be  begun  over  again  to- 
morrow. "  If  only  there  were  a  respite,  and  a 
chance  of  travel  and  change !  "  They  take  it 
for  granted,  and  are  here  voicing  the  almost 
universal  feeling,  that  the  escape  from  com- 


THE  ESCAPE  FROM  COMMONPLACE.      197 

monplace  is    simply  an  affair  of   change   of 
circumstances. 

How  great  an  illusion  this  is  will  be  patent 
to  any  one  who  has  the  opportunity  of  study- 
ing his  fellows  under  widely  varying  conditions. 
Riches  in  themselves  furnish  no  escape  from 
the  commonplace.  They  can  purchase  in- 
numerable things,  but  not  this.  There  is  a 
mob  of  rich  people  to-day,  and  they  are  on  the 
whole  less  interesting  than  the  poor.  Their 
money  can,  if  they  choose,  buy  them  laziness, 
which  they  share  with  the  tramp,  and  to  about 
as  good  purpose.  It  can  secure  the  indulgence 
of  animal  sensations  with  all  manner  of  luxuri- 
ous accessories.  But  some  fatal  laws  block  the 
way  to  felicity  along  this  line ;  the  law  of 
familiarity  which  robs  the  sensation  of  its  first 
flavour,  and  the  laws  relating  to  excess  which 
exact  the  grisliest  of  after  penalties.  Leading 
performers  in  this  line,  a  Tiberius  and  a  Sar- 
danapalus,  offer  great  rewards  for  a  new  plea- 
sure. The  new  pleasures,  alas !  turn  out  to  be 
neither  new  nor  pleasant.  Consumed  with  the 
thirst  for  enjoyment,  and  with  a  whole  world 
waiting  to  minister  to  it,  they  are  at  last  un- 
able, from  the  whole  complicated  apparatus,  to 
extract  one  satisfying  drop. 


198        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

People  who  have  to  stay  at  home  imagine, 
we  have  just  said,  that  a  sure  escape  from  the 
commonplace  is  by  travel  and  change  of  scene. 
It  is  enough  to  rub  shoulders  with  the  average 
globe-trotter  to  be  disillusioned  on  that  head. 
He  carries,  alas !  the  commonplace  everywhere 
about  with  him.  We  call  to  mind  how,  at  a 
Swiss  hotel,  when  an  expedition  was  being 
planned,  a  British  tourist  who  was  listening 
exclaimed,  wearily,  "I  suppose  it  is  just  the 
same  there  as  here,  a  lot  of  mountains  and  that 
kind  of  thing !  "  The  Alps  awakened  in  him 
absolutely  no  response.  He  wanted  Paris.  It 
was  a  brother  soul  who,  on  the  JEgean,  with 
Salamis  and  the  mountains  that  look  on  Mara- 
thon in  full  view,  grumbled  in  our  ear,  "  I  can't 
for  the  life  of  me  see  what  people  find  to  rave 
about  in  these  places ;  a  lot  of  barren  rocks  and 
tumble-down  ruins  !  "  One  meets  Americans, 
spending  half  their  holiday  in  railway  carriages, 
rushing  Europe  and  Asia,  the  driving  power 
behind  them  the  fear  that  their  neighbours  in 
Philadelphia  or  Indianapolis  will  want  to  know 
if  they  inspected  this  mosque  or  saw  that  pic- 
ture, and  will  triumph  over  them  to  their  life's 
end  if  they  did  not.  To  be  carted  round  the 
planet  by  contract  is,  after  all,  a  thin,  surface 


THE  ESCAPE  FEOM.  COMMONPLACE.       199 

business  that  will  never  turn  a  fool  into  a  wise 
man,  nor  put  insight  into  a  blockhead. 

So  far,  then,  as  at  present  appears,  the  busi- 
ness of  escaping  the  commonplace  is  a  difficult 
one,  out  of  the  reach  apparently  of  any  but  the 
rarer  natures.  But  that  would  be  a  hasty  con- 
clusion. The  most  important  factors  in  the 
problem  have  not  yet  been  touched.  To  begin 
with,  Nature  does  not  seem  to  have  organised 
man's  life  here  with  a  view  to  its  being  a  purely 
humdrum  atfair.  That  she  placed  him  in  such 
an  astonishing  universe,  and  with  a  relation  to 
it  so  marvellous,  is  in  itself  the  answer  to  such 
a  supposition.  "When,  a  million  years  ago,  she 
turned  this  new-comer  off  the  track  of  his 
fellow  mammalian  primates  and  began  to  add 
to  his  brain-power  while  these  others  were 
merely  developing  limb-power;  when,  bit  by 
bit,  she  brought  him  along  this  fresh  line  until, 
with  a  body  in  the  same  zoological  kingdom  as 
the  chimpanzee,  he  attained  to  a  mind  that 
demanded  infinity  for  workroom  and  playplace, 
she  gave  notice  that  here  was  a  being  whose 
experience  and  destiny  were  to  be  certainly  not 
common.  Nor  will  she  allow  any  one  of  us  to 
forget  this.  The  knowledge  of  good  and  evil 
that  she  rubs  into  us  j  our  encounters  with  pain 


200        OURSELVES  AND  THE  ONIVEESE. 

and  trouble,  the  fact  that  we  can  never  get 
through  a  day  without  some  rebuff,  some  tangle 
of  circumstance ;  and,  most  striking  of  all, 
that  in  full  view  there  is  placed  before  every 
mother's  son  of  us,  for  wind  up  of  our  present 
career,  the  tremendous  adventure  of  death, 
are  all  Nature's  stern  refusal  to  man  to  permit 
himself  to  be  trivial. 

And  with  this  plain  hint  from  headquarters 
to  start  us,  we  may  now  profitably  turn  our  atten- 
tion to  the  ways  in  which,  imprisoned  as  we 
most  are  in  our  narrowing  labours  and  posi- 
tions, we  may  yet  individually  escape  the 
commonplace.  There  is  but  one  way  and  it  is 
an  inward  way.  The  only  change  as  to  our  cir- 
cumstances that  is  really  effective  is  the  change 
of  our  mental  and  moral  attitude  towards  them. 
It  was  to  this  that  Madame  Swetchine  arrived 
as  the  result  of  her  wide  experience,  "  At 
bottom  there  is  in  life  only  what  one  puts  into 
it "  ;  and  which  Montaigne,  from  an  experience 
still  wider,  has  expressed  in  the  aphorism, 
"  External  occasions  take  both  flavour  and 
colour  from  the  inward  constitution."  Pre- 
cisely in  proportion  as  we  become  in  ourselves 
deeper,  purer,  more  refined,  more  open-eyed, 
does  our  environment  become  more  wonderful, 


THE  ESCAPE  FKOM  COMMONPLACE.      201 

more  wholly  removed  from  tedium  or  vulgarity. 
There  is  no  need  to  travel  a  thousand  miles  in 
search  of  the  sublime.  A  starry  night  is  vastly 
more  sublime  than  Niagara.  Samuel  Drew,  the 
Cornish  shoemaker,  without  going  from  his 
last,  sounded  the  deeps  within  him  to  such 
purpose  as  to  produce  an  astonishing  work  on 
the  soul.  Let  any  one  to  whom  the  hedgerow 
by  his  door  has  become  common  take  with 
him  on  his  next  visit  there  some  handbook 
of  botany,  say  that  treasure  of  delights,  Anne 
Pratt's  "  Flowering  Plants  of  Great  Britain," 
and  he  will  find  his  hedge  bottom  grown 
miraculous  to  him.  The  moment  we  take 
ourselves  in  hand  this  way  and  realise  that 
the  whole  question  of  change,  whether  it 
be  of  scenery  or  circumstance,  is  from  begin- 
ning to  end  a  question  of  our  own  interior,  and 
of  what  goes  on  there,  our  deliverance  has 
begun.  Maeterlinck,  in  his  "  Wisdom  and 
Destiny,"  strikingly  illustrates  this  in  what  he 
says  of  Emily  Bronte.  Here,  says  he,  is  a 
young  woman,  daughter  of  a  country  clergy- 
man, without  means  or  the  excitements  of 
travel  or  of  society,  who  never  had  lover  or 
husband  or  family  of  her  own.  And  yet,  as  her 
one  wonderful  book  shows,  she  lived  out  all 


202        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

these  experiences  in  her  own  soul  and  in  their 
highest  forms.  The  world  for  us,  let  us  repeat, 
is  our  own  interior. 

We  are  not  all,  it  may  be  said,  constructive 
geniuses  like  Emily  Bronte.  But  if  we  cannot 
speak  we  can  at  least  listen,  and  in  the  great 
literatures  which  come  now  to  our  doors  almost 
gratis,  we  may  at  any  hour  escape  from  mean 
surroundings  into  the  rarest  society.  If  Homer 
and  Socrates  and  St.  Paul  and  Shakespeare  are 
of  our  circle,  we  can  dispense  quite  easily  with 
an  invitation  to  the  next  Lord  Mayor's  dinner. 
We  have  touched  literature  here,  however,  not 
to  dwell  upon  it,  but  for  something  to  which  it 
leads  us.  The  power  of  a  great  book,  we  soon 
discover,  is  the  power  of  the  personality  which 
it  enshrines.  What  moves  us  is  that  we  are 
there  in  contact  with  a  soul,  and  the  more  soul 
there  is  in  the  book  the  more  we  are  moved  by 
it.  A  treatise  of  mechanics  is  not  literature 
simply  because  this  personal  element  is  lacking. 
It  is  here  that  literature  helps  us  to  understand 
religion.  The  life  of  literature,  its  whole 
emancipating  power,  lies  in  this  contact  with 
personality.  It  unites  us  with  the  world's  great 
spirits.  And  it  is  because  of  its  revelation  of 
the  Greatest  of  all  Personalities  that  religion 


THE  ESCAPE  FEOM  COMMONPLACE.       203 

is  for  us  the  everlasting  deliverer  from  the 
commonplace.  The  humblest  peasant  who  has 
felt  God  steps  at  once  into  the  world's  selecter 
circle.  He  can  never  be  henceforth,  either  to 
others  or,  what  is  more  important,  to  himself, 
common  or  unclean. 

It  is  to  us  one  of  the  mysteries  that  so  high 
and  serious  a  nature  as  that  of  Comte  should 
have  been  able  to  live  and  die  in  the  belief  of  a 
world  that  had  no  Supreme  Personality  behind 
it.  The  deadly  chill  upon  the  spirit  which  such 
a  system  casts — a  system  in  which  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  universe  only  of  things — a  dead 
universe  with,  as  Richter  puts  it,  a  ghastly  eye 
socket  glaring  down  upon  us  where  an  eye 
should  have  been — makes  us  shiver  even  now 
as  we  remember  the  experience.  It  took  a 
Frenchman  to  prick  this  French  system  with 
one  touch  of  the  pen.  "  The  All,"  said  Victor 
Hugo,  "  would  not  be  the  All  unless  it  con- 
tained a  Personality,  and  that  Personality  is 
God." 

Religion,  we  say,  in  the  sense  of  an  abiding 
consciousness  of  God,  is  the  supreme  deliverer 
from  the  commonplace.  It  is,  as  Joubert  has 
put  it,  "the  poetry  of  the  heart";  it  is  for 
every  man  the  open  door  into  the  infinite. 


204        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

There  seems  a  corollary  to  this,  a  special  instruc- 
tion to  the  religious  teacher  of  whatsoever  name. 
What  his  fellow-man  requires  of  him,  what, 
indeed,  constitutes  his  chief  raison  d'etre  in  the 
world,  is  that  for  himself  and  for  his  fellows  he 
escape  the  commonplace.  And  he  is  to  do  it,  not 
so  much  by  genius  or  by  learning  as  by  enlarge- 
ment and  cleansing  of  his  interior  life,  by  the 
infiltration  into  it  of  the  life  of  God.  There  is 
something  pathetic  beyond  words  in  men's 
yearning  for  the  Divine,  in  the  eagerness  with 
which  they  recognise  any  trace  of  it  in  their 
teacher's  speech  and  life.  By  a  sure  instinct 
they  know  the  reality  and  its  counterfeit. 
"  Art  thou  Brother  Francis  of  Assisi  ?  "  said  a 
peasant  once  to  the  saint.  "  Yes."  "  Try, 
then,  to  be  as  good  as  all  think  thee  to  be, 
because  many  have  great  faith  in  thee,  and 
therefore  I  admonish  thee  to  be  nothing  less 
than  people  hope  of  thee."  Yes,  truly !  Here 
spoke  the  deepest  heart  of  humanity,  and  so 
speaks  it  to-day.  Our  chief  debt  to  our  fellows 
is  the  obligation  to  be  good,  to  live  the  highest 
life  we  know.  A  child-like,  God-loving  soul, 
that  begins  its  life  afresh  every  morning, 
whose  history  is  that  of  a  perpetual  soaring, 
is  the  most  refreshing,  heart-healing  thing 


THE  ESCAPE  FROM  COMMONPLACE.      205 

that  exists.  Beneath  the  world's  cynicism 
lives  the  consciousness  that  its  chief  treasure, 
its  rarest  product,  its  pearl  of  price  is  the 
saint's  supernatural  life.  When  humanity 
sees  this  plant  growing  in  the  wilderness  it 
takes  heart  in  its  journeying,  knowing  it  is  not 
forsaken  of  God. 


XXIII. 
Of   Spiritual   Detachment. 

IN  the  coming  reconstruction  of  theology  the 
builders  will  seek  both  their  ground-plan  and 
their  materials  in  the  region  of  the  spiritual 
laws.  These  laws,  which  operate  throughout 
the  universe,  focus  and  realise  themselves  in 
man.  All  the  revelations,  all  the  external 
facts  that  make  up  human  religious  history, 
have  their  origin  and  their  interpretation  here. 
Some  of  the  laws  lie  very  deep  down,  and  yield 
themselves  only  to  a  very  careful  investigation. 
Of  this  number  is  the  principle  of  spiritual 
detachment,  with  which  we  propose  now  to 
deal.  How  difficult  its  trail  is  to  discern  is 
evident  by  the  numbers  who  have  lost  their 
way  in  trying  to  follow  it.  The  Indian 
devotees  who  give  themselves  up  to  voluntary 
tortures,  or  who  leave  their  families  for  a 
solitary,  homeless  life  in  the  forest,  are  types 
of  these  bewildered  explorers.  But  their  very 
aberrations  point  to  a  something  beneath, 


OF  SPIRITUAL  DETACHMENT.  207 

which  is  distinctive  not  only  of  the  devotee 
but  of  every  man  of  us,  and  which  must  be 
taken  into  account  if  we  would  reach  any 
proper  comprehension  either  of  history  or  of 
ourselves. 

The  law  of  detachment  lies  close  by  the  side 
of  the  law  of  association  in  religion.  The  two 
co-operate  in  defining  the  soul's  movement 
somewhat  as  the  centripetal  and  centrifugal 
forces  co-operate  in  defining  the  orbit  of  the 
earth.  The  operation  of  detachment  is  by  a 
constant  breaking  away  of  the  mind  from  the 
objects  of  its  earlier  attraction  in  search  of 
what  is  wider  and  higher.  The  spiritual  move- 
ment here  has  a  close  parallel  in  the  mental 
progress  of  a  country-bred  man  who  has  after- 
wards seen  the  world.  In  his  earlier  years  his 
view  has  been  confined  to  the  parish  he  was 
born  in.  He  knows  no  other  scenery  and  no 
other  opinions.  He  applies  to  everything  the 
parochial  standard  of  measurement.  He 

Thinks  the  rustic  cackle  of  his  bourg 
The  murmur  of  the  world. 

But  the  later  years  of  travel  and  observation 
snap  the  cables  which  tie  him  to  this  small 
world.  He  finds  himself  part  of  a  larger 


208        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

system.  He  has  a  new  measuring  line,  a 
fresh  standard  for  judging  what  is  big  and 
little.  Many  things  which  loomed  on  the 
rural  horizon  as  of  portentous  moment  are 
now  reckoned  as  of  small  account.  All  round 
the  man  there  has,  we  perceive,  gone  on  a  great 
process  of  detachment. 

But  this,  while  it  represents  relatively  an 
immense  development,  is,  after  all,  only  a 
beginning.  Before  a  deeper  insight  such  a 
world-culture  stands,  in  its  turn,  as  something 
only  parochial.  For  a  true  cosmopolitanism 
there  must  be  excursions  in  a  yet  wider  realm. 
An  imperious  necessity  drives  man  beyond  the 
region  of  flesh  and  sense.  When  these  have 
yielded  him  their  utmost  he  still  finds  himself 

Galled  with  his  confines,  and  troubled  yet  more  with 

his  vastness ; 
Born  too  great  for  his  ends,  never  at  peace  with  his 

goal. 

Everything  in  the  sense  world  bears,  we 
discover,  the  stamp  of  the  evanescent.  The 
Baying  of  Heraclitus  that  we  never  cross  the 
same  river  twice,  because  the  water  we  first 
passed  over  has  fled  to  the  ocean,  is  a  parable 
of  all  our  relations  to  the  visible.  While  we 
look  at  our  possessions  they  melt  before  our 


OF  SPIRITUAL  DETACHMENT.  209 

eyes.  And  could  we  hold  them,  they  are  not 
good  enough.  We  drink  of  this  water  and 
thirst  again.  That  immense  Weltschmerz  of 
which  we  read  in  the  life  of  Lacordaire,  when, 
as  a  brilliant  young  advocate,  with  the  world 
at  his  feet,  he  suddenly  saw  all  its  hideous 
emptiness,  and  fled  from  it  to  the  life  of  the 
cloister,  is  known  to  us  all.  If  we  listen  to  the 
deep  within  us  we  hear  a  cry  there  as  of  a  live 
thing  in  prison,  sighing  for  its  true  home.  Like 
some  sea-bird  in  the  centre  of  a  continent  that 
seeks  a  way  to  the  ocean  that  is  its  habitat, 
the  truest  within  us  calls  to  the  illimitable,  the 
unseen,  and  the  imperishable  as  its  only  proper 
abiding-place. 

It  is  not  till  we  have  reached  this  stage 
of  thought  and  feeling  that  we  are  in  a 
position  to  estimate  the  real  significance  of 
the  message  of  Christ.  Its  central  teaching 
is  that  worldliness  is  a  stupid  provincialism. 
It  is  not  so  much  that  it  is  wicked  as  that  it 
is  so  absurdly  limited.  Christ  brings  ua 
tidings  from  a  larger  world  on  which  He 
proposes  straightway  to  launch  us.  His 
proposition  is  that  we  should 

Here  on  this  bank  in  some  way  live  the  life 
Beyond  the  bridge. 

14 


210  OUKSELVES   AND    THE   UNIVERSE. 

The  parochial  view  finds  its  end  in  the  gain- 
ing of  sensual  pleasures,  of  wealth  and  worldly 
honours.  Christ  proclaims  this  to  be  the  pastime 
of  babes,  and  suggests  that  we  take  up  pursuits 
worthy  of  manhood.  He  speaks  as  the 
citizen  and  emissary  of  a  larger  universe,  to 
whose  vaster  and  more  splendid  careers  He 
invites  us.  And  the  magnificent  detachment 
manifest  in  His  teaching  shines  even  more 
resplendently  in  His  life.  In  a  fine  passage  in 
one  of  his  essays  Holt  Hutton  has  pointed  out 
how  this  appears  specially  in  Christ's  attitude 
to  His  own  sufferings.  It  does  not  occur  to 
Him  that  there  is  any  hardship  to  Himself  in 
being  scourged  and  crucified.  Nothing  is 
further  from  His  mind  than  any  consternation 
at  the  shame  and  disaster  of  His  own  earthly 
destiny.  He  is  occupied  here  entirely  with  the 
wider  purpose  of  the  Divine  Mind.  He  takes 
suffering  and  want,  and  all  the  affronts  the 
world  can  offer,  as  moments  simply  in  a  con- 
stant spiritual  progress,  as  factors  and  instru- 
ments for  making  visible  on  earth  the  invisible 
things  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

It  appears  after  all  then  that,  despite  the 
scoffs  with  which  the  phrase  has  been  greeted, 
the  only  successful  worldliness  is  an  other- 


OF  SPIRITUAL  DETACHMENT.  211 

worldliness.  To  master  this  world  we  must  be 
free  of  another.  Any  lesser  conception  reduces 
our  life  movement  to  something  like  the 
navigation  of  the  pre-compass  period;  a  petty 
steering  by  capes  and  headlands  instead  of 
bold  ventures  across  the  ocean,  guided  by  the 
stars.  Let  us  see,  however,  in  more  detail, 
how  this  law  of  detachment  works. 

It  disconnects  for  one  thing  the  centre  of 
gravity  of  our  life,  the  sum  of  its  purpose, 
inclination  and  desire,  and  lifts  it  to  a 
plane  from  which  everything  takes  on  a  new 
aspect.  At  this  height  we  find  men  taking 
their  sorrows  as  personal  possessions  and  en- 
richments. They  may  not  with  a  Goethe  turn 
them  into  song ;  but  they  will  certainly  trans- 
late them  into  character,  which  is  even  better. 
A  Boethius  under  sentence  of  death  calmly 
occupies  the  interval  in  writing  the  "  Consola- 
tions of  Philosophy";  a  St.  Teresa  when 
persecuted  "  finds  her  soul  in  its  true  king- 
dom with  everything  under  its  feet."  What  a 
splendid  height  of  detachment  is  that  described 
for  us  by  the  Roman  annalist,  of  Canius  Julius 
condemned  to  death  by  Caligula  !  At  the  last 
stroke  of  the  executioner  he  is  asked  by  a 
philosopher  friend  standing  by,  "Canius,  in 


212        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEESE. 

what  state  is  your  soul  now  ?  "  The  answer  is, 
"  I  thought  to  keep  steady  with  all  my  force  to 
see  whether  in  this  instant  of  death  I  might 
perceive  some  dislodging  of  the  soul,  and 
whether  it  would  show  some  feeling  of  its 
sudden  departure."  In  this  supreme  moment, 
that  is,  he  is  occupied  simply  in  the  calm 
scientific  analysis  of  his  own  sensations ! 
Small  ground,  surely,  for  the  howl  of  the 
pessimist  when  life  at  its  worst  can  hurt  no 
more  than  this ! 

An  example  of  this  kind  shows  us  the  extent 
to  which  the  pagan  world,  at  its  best,  had 
learned  the  secret  of  spiritual  detachment.  Its 
achievement,  however,  was  largely  a  negative 
one.  There  is  not  much  good  in  a  detachment 
from  the  lower  if  one  has  not,  to  meet  it,  a 
satisfying  attachment  to  the  higher.  Stoicism 
had  a  grey  sky  over  it,  and  a  north  wind 
blowing.  It  was  bracing,  but  the  scene  lacked 
sunshine.  It  is  here  that  the  Christian 
sanctity  so  far  surpasses  the  Stoic  sanctity. 
It  gives  a  positive  for  the  pagan  negative.  It 
offers  a  home  in  the  invisible  such  as  we  search 
for  in  vain  in  Epictetus  or  Seneca  or  Aurelius. 
They  have  hardened  themselves  into  a  noble 
scorn  of  pain  and  loss,  but  they  have  not  that 


OP  SPIRITUAL  DETACHMENT.  213 

fine  sense  of  harbourage  far  up  in  the  will  of 
God  which  enabled  our  Baxter,  shut  up  in 
prison,  to  sing : 

No  walls  or  bars  can  keep  Thee  out, 

None  can  confine  a  holy  soul ; 
The  streets  of  heaven  it  walks  about, 

None  can  its  liberty  control. 

A  detachment  of  this  kind,  which  makes  the 
soul,  in  old  Tauler's  words,  "  so  grounded  in 
God  that  it  is  dissolved  in  the  inmost  of  the 
Divine  nature,"  is  far  more  than  a  defiance  of 
the  world's  disabilities.  Its  note  is  not  defi- 
ance, but  delight.  The  spirit  revels  in  the 
thought  of  having  attained  at  last  to  life's 
inmost  secret,  of  being  launched  at  last  on  a 
career  which  answers  its  deepest  aspiration  and 
calls  forth  all  its  powers. 

It  is  not  less  interesting  to  trace  the  work- 
ing of  spiritual  detachment  in  the  sphere  of 
human  relationships.  It  is,  for  one  thing, 
the  secret  of  loving.  There  is  no  enduring 
attachment  apart  from  a  high  detachment. 
Where  two  souls  hold  together  it  will  be 
by  a  mutual  breaking  off  from  the  lower 
and  the  unworthy  in  each  other,  and  the 
cleaving  to  and  working  upon  what  is  really 
lovable.  When  our  friend  insists  in  seeing 


214  OUESELVES   AND    THE    UNIVERSE. 

only  the  best  in  us,  trusting  it,  taking  it 
always  for  granted,  and  ignoring  the  lower, 
he  is  going  the  surest  way  to  kill  this 
lower.  Our  evil  is  here  in  a  vacuum  where  it 
cannot  breathe.  It  is  by  a  similar  detach- 
ment that  creed  wars  and  theological  hatreds 
will  finally  die  out.  All  great  souls,  says 
Schiller,  are  akin.  And  as  souls  become  greater 
everywhere,  they  will  refuse  to  deny  their 
kinship.  They  will  detach  themselves  more 
and  more  from  the  divisive  element  in  their 
separate  formularies,  to  unite  on  the  deeper 
life  beneath. 

To  sum  up.  We  have  in  the  law  of  detach- 
ment a  principle  of  separation  in  view  of  a 
higher  union.  Its  presence  in  man  proclaims 
him  born  for  citizenship  in  two  worlds.  As 
the  earth's  motion  is  explicable  only  by  its 
relation  to  a  larger  cosmos,  so  is  the  movement 
of  humanity  explicable  only  by  reference  to  an 
unseen  cosmos.  Christ's  life  and  message  are 
the  completest  example  and  demonstration  of 
this  greater  cosmopolitanism.  The  spiritual 
detachment  which  He  teaches  secures  the 
highest  forms  of  union,  and  by  linking  the 
seen  to  the  unseen  shows  us  how  to  possess 
and  enjoy  them  both. 


XXIV. 
Life's   Present  Tense. 

GRAMMAR,  in  our  school  days,  was  the  desert  of 
Sahara.  In  its  dreary  sand  realm  of  rule  and 
form  grew  no  single  flower  of  human  interest. 
How  differently  it  opens  to  us  in  these  later 
years !  Grammar,  we  find,  is  a  page  out  of  the 
soul.  Its  every  line  is  burdened  with  the 
mystery,  lit  with  the  romance  of  the  human 
spirit.  Take  a  list  of  pronouns.  In  its  "  I," 
"  Thou,"  "  He "  we  have  man's  dawning 
sense  of  himself  and  his  neighbour.  A 
verb's  moods  open  all  the  unfathomables  of 
volition  and  responsibility  j  its  tenses  confront 
us  with  the  stupendous  problem  of  Time. 
What  is  the  real  meaning  of  "  Now  " ;  and  how 
is  it  related  to  a  "then"  and  a  "to  be"?  Our 
grammar  study  may  concentrate  itself  on  this 
point.  There  is  enough  in  it  to  keep  us  busy. 

We  are  approaching  these  themes  to-day  from 
some  startlingly  fresh  standpoints.  For  ages 
men  have,  for  instance,  mused  upon  the  transi- 


216        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

tory,  upon  the  impossibility  of  holding  the 
present  moment,  of  calling  "  halt "  to  the 
eternal  flux.  Physical  research  has  now  its 
own  say  on  the  matter.  It  shows  us  how  the 
sense  of  change  is  necessarily  intertwined  with 
our  consciousness,  for  there  could  be  no  con- 
sciousness without  it.  Every  state  of  feeling  is 
the  result  of  an  impact  of  object  on  subject,  a 
play  of  oppositions.  Our  knowledge  of  our- 
selves and  the  world  results  from  an  incessant 
movement  in  the  primordial  mind-stuff,  in 
which,  during  every  second  of  time,  thousands 
of  infinitesimally  small  changes,  of  readjust- 
ments of  fleeting  groups  of  pulsations,  are 
taking  place.  Our  sense  of  a  present  that 
never  stops  with  us,  that  is  ever  ceasing  to  be 
a  present,  has,  then,  one  of  its  origins  in  the 
physical  conditions  of  thinking.  Our  "  now  " 
cannot  abide  with  us  because  the  very  thought 
of  it  is  itself  a  movement.  From  another 
side,  then,  than  that  along  which  Tennyson 
approaches  the  theme,  we  reach  his  conclusion : 

Thus 
Our  weakness  somehow  shapes  the  shadow,  Time. 

But  our   Time  relation  has   of  late  set  men 
thinking  in  other  and  perhaps  less  profitable 


LIFE'S  PRESENT  TENSE.  217 

directions.  We  have  revivals  of  the  old  meta- 
physical objections  to  the  Christian  outlook 
derived  from  the  ideas  of  existence  and  suc- 
cession. When,  for  instance,  we  speak  of 
personal  survival  in  a  future  life,  we  are  asked, 
"  Survival  of  what  ?  Survival  of  our  childhood, 
of  our  youth,  of  our  manhood  or  of  our  old  age  ? 
Why  this  talk  of  an  after  life,  when  by  the 
mere  process  of  living,  if  we  are  old  enough, 
three- parts  of  us  are  already  dead?  Where  is 
our  childhood  ?  Why  do  we  not  clamour  for 
that  ?  What  is  gone  is  for  ever  gone."  From 
another  side,  Life's  Present  Tense  is  used  as 
an  argument  against  the  Divine  Goodness. 
"  What  use,"  we  are  asked,  "  is  it  to  point  to 
some  possible  state  of  future  felicity  as  a  set-off 
against  the  evil  and  misery  of  the  present? 
That  to-morrow  may  be  good  is  no  answer  to 
the  fact  that  to-day  is  bad.  If  God's  world  is 
evil  now,  a  coming  millennium  takes  no  black- 
ness from  the  present  fact." 

Plainly,  if  we  constitute  ourselves  the  vindi- 
cators of  the  universe  as  against  all  comers, 
we  have  enough  on  our  hands.  Our  role  is 
assuredly  not  that.  With  a  good  conscience 
we  can  leave  the  universe  to  take  care  of  itself. 
We  cannot,  however,  help  thinking  that  the 


218        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

objectors  here,  the  new  as  well  as  the  old,  might 
conceivably  have  found  a  healthier  occupation. 
As  to  the  non-survival  argument,  our  own 
experience  supplies,  surely,  the  best  answer. 
Its  message  is  that  while,  in  one  sense,  our  past 
has  gone,  in  another  it  most  truly  lives  with  us. 
For  our  man-consciousness  holds  in  itself  our 
child-consciousness,  while  old  age  contains  both. 
The  "  now  "  of  the  actual  life  is  never  only  the 
present  moment.  It  is  a  compound,  a  distilla- 
tion. Its  essence  is  an  extract  of  all  that  has 
gone  before.  The  argument,  then,  as  regards 
a  future  life  gains  reinforcement  rather  than 
opposition  from  the  time  sense.  Its  suggestion 
is,  under  new  conditions,  of  a  further  sublima- 
tion, in  which  the  resultants  of  all  the  phases 
of  the  old  life  shall  combine  into  a  new  and 
higher  whole. 

And  to  those  who  bring  life's  present  tense, 
with  its  apparent  evil,  as  a  charge  against  God 
and  His  world,  and  who  admit  no  plea  of  a 
coming  better  in  mitigation,  the  answer  is 
practically  the  same.  Their  "  now "  is  a 
fictitious  one.  For  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
present  without  a  future.  As  Schiller  has  it, 
"all  is  fruit  and  all  is  seed."  The  "to  come" 
is  not  only  ahead  of  the  existent,  but  is  in  it 


LIFE'S  PRESENT  TENSE.  219 

and  a  part  of  it.  The  one  would  not  be  itself 
without  the  other.  And  the  soul  is  deeply 
conscious  of  this,  and  in  the  highest  tumult  of 
the  outward  is  sure  of  its  good.  "  My  body," 
says  a  modern  thinker,  "  weeps  and  sighs,  but 
a  something  in  me,  which  is  above  me,  rejoices 
at  everything."  When  Walt  Whitman,  in  his 
daring  fashion,  declares,  "  I  say  there  is  in  fact 
no  evil,  or  if  there  is,  I  say  it  is  just  as  import- 
ant to  you  or  to  me  as  anything  else,"  he 
means  practically  this.  The  totality  to  which 
we  belong,  including  all  to  which  it  tends,  as 
well  as  all  from  which  it  comes,  is  a  good  at 
which  the  soul  rejoices.  The  Areopagite,  the 
old  Greek  Christian  thinker,  whose  thought 
ruled  so  many  ages,  in  declaring  that  evil  was 
a  shadow,  a  non-being,  a  finite  to  set  off  the 
perfection  of  the  Infinite,  sounds  the  same  note. 
A  German  poet  thus  re-echoes  it  to-day : 
"Everything  inferior  is  a  higher  in  the 
making,  everything  hateful  a  coming  beauti- 
ful, everything  evil  a  coming  good.  And  we 
see  it,  aD  incomplete  as  it  is,  and  laugh  and 
love  it," 

On  ultimate  questions  we  shall  perhaps  not 
get  much  nearer  than  that.  Meanwhile,  Life's 
Present  Tense  suggests  matters  more  immediate 


220        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

to  ourselves.  Our  own  age  is  not  strong  in  its 
appreciation  of  the  present  tense.  In  its 
desperate  chase  after  what  it  has  not,  the  ques- 
tion might  occur  whether,  as  Goethe  so  pro- 
foundly says,  "  we  are  not  farthest  from  the 
object  of  our  desires  when  we  imagine  we  pos- 
sess that  which  we  desire."  A  man  consumes 
his  life  in  gaining  wealth,  and  finds  at  the  end 
that  he  has  lost  the  power  of  enjoying  it.  He 
postpones  his  happiness  till  to-morrow ;  he 
forms  the  habit  of  so  doing,  until  the  postpone- 
ment becomes  sine  die.  Meanwhile  the  world 
men  are  rushing  through  without  stopping  to 
observe  it  belongs  really  to  him  who  has 
learned  that  "  Now  is  the  accepted  time."  The 
whole  art  of  living,  properly  considered,  is  the 
art  of  the  present  moment.  "  Can  this  hour  be 
sordid,"  I  ask,  "  when  it  is  a  piece  of  God's 
eternity  ?  "  If  God  is  not  Love  at  this  moment, 
He  never  was  or  will  be.  If  that  Love  is  not 
filling  me  at  this  moment  with  its  own  heaven 
that  is  my  fault.  To  pure  minds  there  are  no 
sordid  moments,  and  there  is  no  sordid  world. 
What  fools  we  are  not  to  taste  our  "  now,"  to 
feel  its  whole  content,  to  distil  from  it  the 
wonders,  the  mysteries,  the  ecstasies  that  lie 
there  ! 


LIFE'S  PRESENT  TENSE.  221 

To  extract  this  savour  of  the  moment  re- 
quires the  perpetual  discipline  and  enlargement 
of  the  soul.  We  cannot  taste  time's  full  flavour 
till  we  have  pierced  through  to  something  that 
is  beyond  time.  As  a  mediaeval  thinker  puts  it, 
"  Our  passing  life  that  we  have  here  in  our 
sense-soul  knoweth  not  what  our  Self  is." 
Spinoza,  the  Jew  grinder  of  lenses,  who  refused 
a  fortune  in  order  to  conserve  his  inner  wealth, 
had  mastered  the  lesson.  To  love  only  the 
perishable,  says  he,  means  strife,  envy,  hatred 
and  fear,  while  "to  love  the  eternal  and 
infinite  feeds  the  mind  with  pure  joy,  and  is 
wholly  free  from  sorrow."  When  we  have 
reached  this  point,  of  seeing  the  Divine  in  the 
present  and  the  actual,  we  are  free  of  the  uni- 
verse. We  belong  no  longer  to  that  category 
of  men  who,  in  Emerson's  words,  "seem  as 
though  whipped  through  the  world,  the  hacks 
of  invisible  riders."  Eather  are  we  of  those 
who,  to  quote  a  modern  philosopher,  "  have  a 
degree  of  existence  at  least  ten  times  larger 
than  others — who,  in  other  words,  exist  ten 
times  as  much." 

There  is  one  sphere  is  which  life's  grammar 
of  the  present  tense  imperiously  calls  to  be 
mastered,  if  we  would  avoid  failure's  deepest 


222        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

hell.  It  is  that  of  the  affections  and  of  the 
family.  We  burn  to  reconstruct  the  characters 
of  our  acquaintance  and  kinsfolk,  and  forget 
that,  just  as  they  are,  they  are  full  of  a  lovable- 
ness  which  only  our  prejudices  hide,  and  which 
we  shall  see  as  with  a  flash  when  it  is  gone 
from  us.  How  many  are  there  in  the  plight  of 
Marie  Bashkirtseff  when  she  says  of  her 
mother :  "  I  believe  she  is  really  fond  of  me, 
and  I  am  really  fond  of  her  too,  but  we  cannot 
be  two  minutes  together  without  irritating 
one  another  to  tears."  "Nevermore,"  the 
saddest  word  in  language,  gains  tenfold 
bitterness  when  uttered  of  an  intercourse 
snapped  by  death,  where  love  has  failed  of 
its  expression. 

For  she  is  in  her  grave,  and  oh  ! 
The  difference  to  me ! 

is  then  the  cry  from  a  tragedy  too  great  for 
words. 

The  full  appreciation  of  the  present  tense  is 
one  of  the  privileges  of  the  later  years.  Life, 
to  the  youthful  palate,  is  a  somewhat  raw  and 
acrid  product.  It  is  full  of  froth  and  ferment, 
and  has  not  had  time  to  mature.  It  takes 
years  for  the  liquor  to  clarify  and  gather  its 


LIFE'S  PEESENT  TENSE.  223 

true  relish.  That  is  why  a  career  of  spiritual 
growth  blossoms  into  such  rare  beauty  towards 
the  end.  "We  say  of  such  proficients  what 
Morris  sings,  with  a  different  application : 

In  such  Saint  Luke's  short  summer  lived  these  men, 
Nearing  the  goal  of  three  score  years  and  ten. 

They  can  say  with  a  French  wit,  though 
with  a  better  application,  <f  Je  prends  mon  bien 
ou  je  le  trouve."  They  eat  and  drink,  not 
because  "to-morrow  we  die,"  but  because 
their  day  has  a  taste  in  it  of  eternity ;  their  to- 
morrow suggests  not  death,  but  life.  Life's 
present  tense  is  to  them  not  only  an  existence, 
but  a  becoming.  Half  its  joy  is  an  aspiration. 
It  holds  a  good  which  has  only  begun  to  be 
fulfilled.  An  old  mystic  has  struck  its  note 
with  a  sweet  exactness  in  the  words  :  "  I  saw 
Him  and  sought  Him;  I  had  Him  and  I 
wanted  Him." 


XXV. 
A    Doctrine    of    Echoes. 

AN  echo  may,  for  general  purposes,  be  con- 
sidered as  made  up  of  two  main  factors,  a 

sound  and  a  reflecting  surface.  In  multitudes 
of  cases  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  which  of 
the  two  has  the  greater  share  in  the  effect.  In 
the  world's  famous  echo  spots,  such  as  Killar- 
ney,  or  that  at  the  Castle  of  Simonetta,  in 
Italy,  which  repeats  a  note  sixty  times,  the 
result  is,  here  as  everywhere,  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  the  loudness  of  the  trumpet-blast  or 
pistol-shot.  But  that  is  only  half  the  matter. 
The  marvellous  repetitions,  as  well  as  the 
quality  and  volume  of  sound,  depend  not  so 
much  on  the  emitted  note  as  on  the  number 
and  character  of  the  reflecting  surfaces.  Of 
all  echoes  it  is  true  that  if  we  change  either  of 
the  two  factors,  the  original  sound  or  the  sub- 
stance on  which  it  impinges,  we  have  a  corre- 
sponding change  in  the  phenomenon.  This 
play  of  forces  in  the  dead  world  of  rock  and 


A  DOCTRINE  OP  ECHOES.  225 

mountain  has  impressed  most  of  us  at  one  time 
or  another  with  its  strange,  startling  and  often 
weirdly  beautiful  results.  If  we  have  been  in 
a  reflective  mood,  it  has  probably  set  us  think- 
ing. As  these  great  sound  combinations  have 
rolled  round  us  we  have  realised  the  quickness 
of  Nature's  response,  and  also  the  variety  of  it. 
We  see  how  every  substance  answers  the  call 
made  on  it  according,  not  simply  to  the  intrin- 
sic nature  of  that  call,  but  according,  also,  to 
its  own  intrinsic  nature.  The  moment  we 
strike  that  truth,  we  are  at  the  centre  of  life 
and  of  history.  An  illuminating  flash  gleams 
over  a  hundred  mysteries,  and,  if  it  does  not 
penetrate  their  secret  sets  them  at  least  in  a 
new  light.  Let  us  see,  in  some  different  direc- 
tions, what  the  light  seems  to  reveal. 

The  true  echo  realm  is,  let  us  premise,  not 
the  mountains  but  the  field  of  human  life. 
Hock  and  hill  give  back  nothing  comparable 
for  variety  and  mystery  with  the  notes  that 
reverberate  through  the  ages,  with  human 
souls  for  their  sounding-boards.  Our  thought- 
world  is  full  of  deep  undertones  that  roll  in 
upon  us  from  an  immemorial  past.  The  com- 
monest words  we  use  are  blocks  of  mind-stuff 
rolled  into  their  present  shape  by  the  attrition 

16 


226        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

of  measureless  years.     The  ideas  of  the  antique 
world  are  all  alive  to-day,  only  yielding  new 
tones    as   they    strike   fresh   mental  surfaces. 
Continually  in  history  have  we  the  phenomenon 
of  voices  that  had  slumbered  for  millenniums, 
waking  up  suddenly  and  beginning  again  to  fill 
the  world.     So  was  it  at  the  Renaissance,  when 
Europe,  sunk  for  centuries  in  mediaeval  scholas- 
ticism, listened  entranced  to  the  mighty  musi- 
cal  note   from   ancient   Greece.      To-day  the 
hoary  East,  from  an  even  greater  antiquity,  is 
whispering  its  mystic  word   into   the   modern 
ear.     It  is  wonderful  to  note  the  tricks  which 
the  echo  plays  in  history ;  with  what  strange 
and  sometimes  sinister  varieties  it  throws  back 
the  original  sound.     Luther's  gospel   rolls   on 
him  from  one  point  in  the  shape  of  a  Peasants' 
War ;  the  liberalism  of  a  Locke  and  a  Boling- 
broke,  so  restrained  and  ordered  as  first  uttered, 
striking  on  the  fevered  imagination  of  France, 
echoes  back  in  wild  eighteenth-century  revolu- 
tion; the  calm  research  and  cautious  affirma- 
tions   of    our  English  Darwin   rebound   from 
answering  brains  on  the  Continent  as  a  system 
of  materialism  and  of  no  religion. 

But  our  real  theme  is  waiting.     What   has 
been  said  on  the  natural  history  of  echoes  was 


A  DOCTRINE  OF  ECHOES.  227 

with  a  view  to  its  special  application  to  the 
question  of  religion.  There  are  points  here, 
obvious  enough  when  we  actually  face  them, 
but  which  have  been  strangely  overlooked  in 
average  religious  teaching.  It  was  seen  a 
moment  ago  that  our  echo  varies  directly,  not 
only  according  to  the  character  of  the  produc- 
ing sound,  but  also  to  that  of  the  material  it 
strikes  on.  Have  we  fairly  considered  what 
this  means  in  its  bearing  on  our  theories  of 
Gospel  and  Christianity?  An  evident  first 
result  is  that  Christianity,  as  a  received  fact, 
must  vary  with  every  race  and  every  individual 
that  it  severally  touches.  For  here,  as  with 
the  mountain  and  the  bugle  note,  it  is  not  the 
sound  only  but  the  surface  it  reaches  that  pro- 
duces the  result.  The  whole  problem  is  raised 
in  that  parable  of  the  sower,  the  real  signifi- 
cance of  which  is  generally  so  entirely  missed. 
The  seed  is  from  one  basket  and  of  a  like 
quality  throughout.  But  it  falls  upon  a  variety 
of  soils  and  the  results  are  entirely  in  accord- 
ance with  the  difference  in  them.  The  Gospel 
as  thus  conceived  is,  then,  a  revelation,  not 
simply  of  the  truth  contained  in  itself,  but  of 
the  mental  and  spiritual  condition  of  those  it 
reaches.  The  proclamation  of  it  is  a  kind  of 


228        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

judgment-day,  in  whose  light  stands  revealed 
the  precise  height  to  which  its  hearer  has  risen. 
It  seems  strange  to  say  that  a  man's  gospel  is 
what  his  pre-existing  disposition  makes  of  it. 
That,  indeed,  would  not  be  entirely  true,  for 
the  message  brings  something  of  its  own, 
apart  from  any  qualities  of  the  receiver.  But 
these  latter,  we  repeat,  tell,  and  that  de- 
cisively, at  every  point  of  the  result. 

But  what  is  the  outcome  of  this  ?  For  one 
thing,  that  Christianity,  as  received  by  nations 
and  individuals,  is  never  an  entirely  new 
thing.  It  can  only  reach  the  soul  by  mingling 
with  what  is  already  there,  and  taking  on  its 
shape  and  colour.  We  teach  what  we  call 
"  the  same  things "  to  a  cultured,  subtle 
Brahmin  and  to  a  cannibal  of  New  Guinea. 
Are  they  the  same  thmgs  ?  Assuredly  not  to 
them.  The  mental  product  in  these  separate 
minds  is  different  with  all  the  difference  of 
their  training  and  of  their  past.  Evidently  we 
cannot  make  our  Christianity  a  thing  separate 
and  apart  from  the  world's  earlier  culture. 
The  thing  is  forbidden  by  everything  in 
history  and  by  everything  in  the  human  soul. 
There  is  a  Greek  Christianity,  and  a  Latin,  a 
Saxon  and  an  Indian — as  many  Christianities 


A   DOCTEINE  OF  ECHOES.  229 

as  there  are  races  and  types,  as  many,  indeed, 
as  there  are  minds.  And  these  forms  owe 
their  speciality  to  the  earlier  training  which 
they  found.  The  New  Testament  religion,  so 
far  from  being  isolated  and  out  of  relation  with 
other  disciplines,  could  not,  the  human  mind 
being  what  it  is,  do  anything  at  all  except  in 
union  with  them.  To  what,  in  the  "  sower  " 
parable,  is  owing  the  thirty  or  the  sixty  fold 
product  of  some  natures  ?  How  did  the  ground 
in  these  cases  come  to  be  so  good  ?  There  is 
only  one  answer.  The  Gospel  here  recognises 
the  goodness  of  the  Gospels  that  went  before  it. 
We  find  here,  in  fact,  a  recognition  of  what 
a  study  of  the  nature  of  things,  especially  as 
seen  in  the  laws  of  the  mind,  makes  inevitable 
— that  Christianity  can  only  be  properly  under- 
stood as  forming  part  of  a  great  redemptive 
world-process,  embracing  all  nations  and  all 
ages,  and  working  as  certainly  beyond  as  within 
the  sphere  of  its  own  direct  influence.  This 
truth  was  indeed  recognised  in  earlier  ages  of 
the  Church  more  clearly  than  it  is  in  some 
places  to-day.  The  Alexandrian  fathers  were 
emphatic  in  their  acceptance  of  what  Clement 
calls  the  "  dispensation  of  paganism  "  ;  in  their 
admission  that  the  Greek  philosophy  was  a 


230        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Divine  teaching,  and  that  the  whole  earlier 
world  was  taught  of  God.  What  a  fine 
breadth,  at  once  of  faith,  of  insight  and  of 
charity,  have  we  in  that  utterance  on  this 
point  of  Clement  in  the  "  Stromata  " : 
"  Wherefore  His  are  all  men ;  some  actually 
knowing  Him,  others  not  as  yet;  some  as 
friends,  others  as  faithful  labourers,  others  as 
bond  servants.  He  it  is  who  gives  to  the  Greeks 
their  philosophy  .  .  .  for  He  is  the 
Saviour,  not  of  these  or  those,  but  of  all.  .  .  . 
Dispensing  in  former  times  His  word  to  some, 
to  some  philosophy,  now  at  length  by  His  own 
personal  coming  He  has  closed  the  course  of 
unbelief  ;  Greek  and  barbarian  being  led  for- 
ward by  a  separate  process  to  that  perfection 
which  is  through  faith." 

The  New  Testament  religion,  then,  as  offered 
the  world  is  not,  nor  was  intended  to  be,  in 
itself  an  absolute.  It  is  a  relative,  avowing  in 
its  very  terms  a  dependence  for  its  results  on 
the  cultures  which  had  preceded  it.  But  to 
leave  the  matter  here  would  be  to  leave  it  in 
halves  ;  we  should  have,  in  fact,  precisely  one  of 
those  half  truths  which  make  a  whole  false- 
hood. To  get  the  entire  truth  we  need  now  to 
look  at  the  other  half  of  our  echo.  We  have 


A  DOCTRINE  OP  ECHOES.  231 

seen  some  of  the  things  included  in  the  reflect- 
ing surface.  What  now  of  the  producing 
voice  ?  There  are  laws  on  this  side  as  well  as 
on  the  other.  When,  in  the  same  surroundings, 
coming  back  from  the  same  mountain  side  or 
cliff  formation,  we  have  at  different  times  a 
different  echo,  we  know  the  difference  here 
must  be  in  the  originating  sound.  Variation 
of  tone,  of  quality,  of  intensity,  will  be  accord- 
ing to  what  is  found  in  that.  It  is  when  we 
apply  to  the  Gospel  this  other  side  of  an  echo- 
doctrine  that  we  can  re-make  the  Christian 
affirmations  that  our  earlier  study  seemed  to 
question.  Innumerable  other  voices  have,  be- 
fore and  since  Christ,  thrown  themselves  against 
this  mountain  mass  of  humanity.  The  mass 
was  the  same,  but  what  of  the  response  ? 

It  is  here  that  the  consideration  comes  in 
with  such  effect  that  Harnack  has  urged  in  his 
latest  work,  "Das  Wesen  des  Christentums."  We 
cannot,  as  he  says,  judge  a  great  personality 
simply  by  himself ;  we  cannot  measure  him 
merely  by  his  own  words,  his  own  deeds.  To 
approximate  to  his  full  size  we  must  study  the 
effect  he  has  produced  on  others.  And  where 
we  cannot  hear  the  voice  itself,  we  can  measure 
it  by  its  echo.  When  we  carry  this  method  to 


232        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

our  estimate  of  Christ  there  is  no  doubt  about 
the  result.  The  most  merciless  critic  of  the 
New  Testament  must  recognise  that  it  repre- 
sents what  the  first  generation  of  believers 
thought  and  felt  about  Jesus.  This  is  the 
echo  of  His  personality  in  human  hearts.  Was 
there  ever  such  an  one,  before  or  since  ? 
Imagine  Luther's  or  Wesley's  most  enthusi- 
astic followers  using  language  about  them  such 
as  is  used  of  Christ  in  the  gospels  and  the 
epistles  !  And  the  echo  is  not  in  language  only, 
but  in  lives.  Let  any  one  read  the  account 
of  early  Christian  living  and  character  in  the 
Apology  of  Aristides,  and  ask  himself  what 
force  must  have  been  operating  to  produce 
such  effects  upon  the  dissolute  and  degraded 
humanity  of  the  Roman  Empire  ?  The  Divine 
life  in  man  as  here  depicted,  be  sure,  had 
Divinity  for  its  origin. 

What  is  here  written  is  the  merest  fragment 
on  our  doctrine  of  echoes.  All  life  and  history 
could  indeed  be  presented  in  terms  of  it.  Our 
truest  art  is  ever  an  echo.  It  is  the  reproduction 
of  a  pattern  in  the  Mount,  the  reflection  of  an 
Eternal  Beauty  subsisting  before  the  worlds. 
And  music  also.  Our  Beethovens  and  Mozarts 
are  none  of  them  inventors  or  creators.  The 


A  DOCTRINE  OP  ECHOES.  233 

music  was  there,  with  all  its  laws,  its  inmost 
essence  and  meaning,  before  they  came  or 
humanity  was.  They  are  only  explorers  of 
what  was  waiting  to  be  found.  Like  St. 
Cecilia,  they  are  listeners  to  a  harmony  that 
floats  down  from  heaven.  Our  world  is  indeed 
full  of  echoes  from  that  better  country.  Were 
our  faculties  more  attuned  we  should  hear  them 
sooner.  A  saintly  life  makes  a  man  an  auditory 
nerve  of  the  eternal.  That  others  hear  nothing 
is  no  disproof  of  his  message.  The  deniers  are 
simply  asserting  that  they  are  deaf.  The  men 
who  have  seen  do  not  contradict  the  blind. 
They  pity  them.  Says  Erasmus  of  Sir  Thomas 
More :  "  He  discourses  with  his  friends  of  the 
life  to  come  in  such  a  way  that  one  cannot  fail 
to  recognise  how  much  his  mind  is  in  it,  how 
good  a  hope  he  has  of  it."  "A  reporter  of 
echoes,"  say  you  ?  Yes,  but  the  echoes  imply 
a  voice. 


XXVI. 
Of  Divine  Leading. 

AFTER  some  thousands  of  years  of  conscious 
life  on  this  planet  our  race  continues  to  ex- 
hibit a  strange  confusion  of  opinion  concerning 
the  terms  on  -which  we  inhabit  it.  Across  the 
gulfs  of  time  one  generation  calls  to  another 
as  to  what  cheer,  and  gets  only  dubious 
replies.  Watchers'  eyes  are  turned  night  and 
day  to  the  heavens,  but  the  report  is  often  of 
nothing  but  the  incessant  drift  of  impenetrable 
cloud.  Some  of  the  acutest  minds  have  made 
of  the  Universe  only  a  chance  medley.  The 
messenger  in  the  Antigone,  who  declares  "  it  is 
but  chance  that  raiseth  up  and  chance  that 
bringeth  low,"  represents  a  mental  habit 
strangely  fashionable  both  in  the  old  and 
modern  world.  People  in  both  periods  have 
fallen  back  upon  this  theory  with  positive  relief 
as  a  refuge  from  current  theologies.  Lucretius 
proclaimed  his  doctrine  of  materialistic  no- 
religion  as  a  real  gospel.  He  thought  men 


OF  DIVINE  LEADING.  235 

would  become  happy  by  ridding  themselves  of 
the  notion  of  a  Providence  and  a  hereafter! 
Nietzsche,  in  our  day,  reappears  with  the  same 
notion.  He  apostrophises  the  idea  of  God  in 
the  language  of  Charles  the  Bold  when  com- 
bating Louis  XL,  "  Je  combats  1'universelle 
araignee." 

But  the  old  atheist  had  an  excuse  which  we 
cannot  allege  for  our  modern  one.  The  gods 
the  former  was  asked  to  worship  were,  assuredly, 
not  worth  the  trouble.  They  have  gone  since, 
and  are  not  missed.  Think  of  a  '*  divine 
guidance "  under  which  an  Agamemnon  must 
see  his  loved  Iphigenia,  the  delight  of  his  eyes, 
in  the  bloom  of  her  virgin  youth,  lifted  on  the 
fatal  altar,  "face  downwards,"  as  ^Eschylus 
describes,  and  a  knife  drawn  across  her  throat ! 
Well  might  the  Latin  poet,  thinking  on  these 
horrors  wrought  in  the  name  of  piety,  conceive 
of  religion  as  a  kind  of  Medusa  head  displayed 
from  the  clouds,  "  threatening  mortals  with 
her  terrible  aspect." 

Spite  of  these  outbursts,  however,  the  main 
stream  of  human  thinking  has  set  broad  and 
deep  in  the  direction  of  an  overruling  Provi- 
dence as  at  once  the  ground  and  the  explana- 
tion of  life.  The  "Fate"  of  Stoic  doctrine, 


236         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEKSE. 

when  examined,  comes  mainly  to  this.  We  are 
in  a  world  that  was  arranged  for  us  and  not 
by  us.  The  thinking  out  of  the  business  was 
done  before  we  arrived.  Our  own  mental 
exercises  are  at  best  a  very  subordinate  affair. 
They  are  something  like  our  perambulations  on 
board  a  vessel.  As  we  move  about  on  the  deck 
our  steps  may  take  by  turn  a  northerly  or 
southerly  or  westerly  direction,  but  they  do  not 
alter  in  the  least  the  course  of  the  ship,  nor 
the  ultimate  point  to  which  it  will  bring  us. 
As  to  whether  this  providential  supervision 
regarded  the  world  only  as  a  whole  or  ex- 
tended to  the  concerns  of  individuals  the  early 
thinkers  seem  divided.  Homer  puts  his  heroes 
under  the  special  protection  of  this  or  that 
divinity,  but  lets  the  mass  take  care  of  them- 
selves. Cicero,  with  his  doctrine  of  the  vir 
magnus  inspired  afflatu  divino,  seems  of  the 
same  opinion.  Yictor  Hugo  has  somewhere 
expressed  himself  similarly.  Geniuses  (like 
himself)  were  certainly  looked  after  in  this 
world  and  the  next.  As  to  the  rest,  it  didn't 
much  matter.  Epictetus,  who  in  this  seems 
very  likely  to  have  been  in  contact  with  Jewish, 
if  not  even  with  primitive  Christian  sources, 
strikes  a  far  more  certain  note.  He  proclaims 


OP  DIVINE  LEADING.  287 

a  divine  leading  for  us  all.  "There  is  no 
movement  of  which  He  is  not  conscious.  To 
Him  all  hearts  are  open.  .  .  .  As  we  walk, 
or  talk,  or  eat,  He  Himself  is  within  us,  so  that 
we  are  His  shrines,  living  temples  and  incarna- 
tions of  Him." 

Of  the  Christian  doctrine  on  this  subject,  as 
recorded  in  the  original  documents,  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  The  religion  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  is  above  all  things  a  democratic 
religion.  "The  hairs  of  your  head  are  all 
numbered  "  applied  not  only  to  patrician  locks 
but  to  the  unkempt  polls  of  the  cobblers  and 
fishers  who  heard  first  the  Divine  words.  It 
was,  indeed,  the  eager  acceptance  and  handing- 
on  of  the  doctrine  by  the  "  dim  common 
populations  "  that  so  excited  the  wrath  of  its 
"  superior  "  opponents.  Libanius,  like  Sydney 
Smith  with  the  Methodists,  could  not  away 
with  teachers  who  "had  left  their  tongs, 
mallets  and  anvils  to  preach  about  the  things 
of  heaven."  His  sneer  reminds  us  of  that 
later  one  by  Cornelius  Agrippa  :  "  Blessed  are 
the  poor  in  spirit,  blessed  are  illiterate  people 
like  the  apostles;  blessed  is  the  ass." 

Yet  this  doctrine  of  the  highest  guidance 
for  every  mother's  son  of  us  is  really  the  only 


238        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

one  this  side  atheism.  As  a  modern  writer 
has  bluntly  put  it,  "  Unless  the  hairs  of  our 
head  are  all  numbered  there  is  no  God."  The 
doctrine  is  so  logical.  Any  one  who,  under 
good  scientific  guidance,  has  examined  the 
structure  of  a  human  hair,  has  to  say  whether 
this  marvel  is  a  product  of  blind  chance  or 
of  a  high  intelligence.  If  it  is  intelligence 
which  made  it  and  is  still  looking  after  it, 
then,  a  fortiori,  intelligence  is  looking  also 
after  its  wearer.  It  is  amazing  we  do  not 
more  definitely  settle  this  matter  with  our- 
selves. It  would  resolve  so  many  questions. 
We  should  go  on  working,  but  leave  off 
worrying.  As  it  is,  we  imagine  the  world  is 
on  our  shoulders.  We  groan  over  the  con- 
dition of  the  Church,  and  the  back  ebb  in 
which  religion  finds  itself.  If  we  believe  in 
the  sermon  our  own  hair  teaches  us  as  we 
brush  it  of  mornings  we  shall  stop  this 
lamentation.  As  if  religion  began  when  we 
took  up  its  business  and  will  end  when  we 
retire !  Of  the  amazing  tricks  men  resort  to, 
in  the  notion  that  thereby  they  are  keeping 
religion  going,  there  will  also  be  a  final  end. 
Orthodoxy  will  cease  to  be  alarmed  about 
Biblical  criticism,  under  the  assured  persuasion 


OP  DIVINE  LEADING.  239 

that  God  knew  its  conclusions  and  results  long 
before  Wellhausen. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  bearing  of  this 
doctrine  on  our  personal  life  that  it  gains 
its  weightiest  import.  If  a  man  can  only  get 
some  reasonable  assurance  that  in  this  welter 
of  a  world  he  is  not  left  to  fight  his  own 
battle,  or  to  muddle  his  way  through  as  best 
he  can,  unhelped  or  un  guided !  What  for  the 
twentieth  century  is  the  assurance  on  this 
point?  Apart  from  the  consideration  just 
urged  the  evidence  is  of  two  sorts,  an  external 
and  an  internal.  In  that  first,  outward  sphere 
there  is  to  be  noted  what  strikes  us  as  a 
feature  most  significant  and  affecting.  It  is 
that  the  evidence  is  usually  reserved  to  the 
period  when  it  is  most  needed.  In  early  life, 
when  the  blood  leaps  in  the  veins,  when  the 
sensation  is  of  an  inward  vigour  that  can  crash 
through  everything,  when  parents  and  friends 
are  at  hand  for  what  aid  is  needed,  the  notion 
of  a  providential  guidance  is  little  thought  of. 
But  when  that  other  half  of  our  life  opens, 
that  old-age  half  which  Bishop  Warburton 
characterised  so  truly  as  "  a  losing  game,"  the 
half  which  will  contain  our  suffering,  our 
decaying,  our  dying,  then  is  it  that  for  the 


240        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

loyal  and  disciplined  soul  there  arises  the 
steadily  accumulating  demonstration  of  a 
wonderful  and  beneficent  leading.  And,  as 
Ritschl  has  here  observed,  "the  belief  arises 
not  from  the  study  of  the  fortunes  of  others, 
but  in  each  case  from  the  study  of  our  own 
fortunes  and  experience."  Nor  is  it  the  least 
tried  people  who  get  the  deepest  assurance. 
It  is  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  in  his  youth 
such  an  outrecuidant  sceptic,  who  in  his  later, 
broken  invalid  years  writes :  "  If  you  are  sure 
that  God,  in  the  long  run,  means  kindness  to 
you,  you  should  be  happy."  He  had  become 
sure  of  that  himself. 

The  evidence  we  go  upon  is  often  such  as  we 
cannot  talk  about,  and  which  would  appear  by 
itself  quite  inadequate  in  a  law  court.  It  was 
not  meant  for  the  law  court,  but  for  our- 
selves. It  is  its  mysterious  inner  appeal  to  us 
that  counts.  A  conjunction  of  circumstances, 
which  has  no  special  meaning  to  others,  seems 
to  whisper  a  message  in  our  private  ear.  It 
is  to  us  in  that  moment  as  though  Nature  had 
broken  her  long  habit  of  silence,  and  told  our 
heart  that  we  are  known,  and  cared  for,  and 
loved.  There  are  innumerable  stories  abroad 
of  what  are  called  special  Providences.  Some 


OP  DIVINE  LEADING.  241 

of  them,  doubtless,  need  to  be  received  with 
caution.  People  are  apt  to  put  a  large 
quantity  of  subjectivity  into  narratives  about 
themselves.  The  demand  for  the  wonderful 
creates  a  supply.  We  do  not  forget  the  speech 
reported  by  Henry  Wilberforce  of  a  certain 
Archdeacon :  "  It  is  remarkable  that  all  the 
most  spiritually-minded  men  I  have  known 
were  in  their  youth  extraordinary  liars."  The 
sphere  of  religion,  because  it  is  the  sphere  of 
the  marvellous,  has  suffered  more  than  any 
other  from  the  lack  of  simple  accuracy.  Yet 
when  all  deduction  has  been  made,  the 
evidence  is  overwhelming  that  testifies  to  the 
visible  footprints  of  the  Guide.  It  comes  from 
every  age  and  quarter.  Paul's  story  of  his 
experience  outside  Damascus,  and  Augustine's 
of  the  "  tolle,  lege,"  which  converted  him  at 
Milan,  are  not  more  wonderful  than  histories 
poured  into  our  own  ear  by  people  who  are 
walking  about  to-day. 

But  the  satisfying  evidence  for  this  belief 
will  be,  for  each  of  us,  an  internal  one.  The 
conviction  of  a  guidance  of  our  outward  life 
will  grow  in  proportion  as  we  realise  a 
guidance  of  the  inward  life.  Barclay,  in  his 
"  Apology,"  has  put  the  principle  of  all  this 

16 


242        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

in  language  that  can  hardly  be  bettered : 
"  That  Christians  are  now  to  be  led  inwardly 
and  immediately  by  the  Spirit  of  God  even  in 
the  same  manner,  though  it  befall  not  many 
to  be  led  in  the  same  measure,  as  the  saints 
were  of  old."  The  higher  spiritual  life  is  just 
as  much  a  reality  as  the  higher  intellectual 
life.  Precisely  as  a  man  who  devotes  himself 
to  the  culture  of  his  intellect  will  rise  to  a 
plane  superior  to  that  of  the  mass  and  bring  to 
the  decision  of  questions  a  faculty  of  which 
they  are  scarcely  conscious,  so  in  the  most 
central  sphere  a  similar  devotion  will  yield  a 
like  result,  only  a  higher.  To  those  who  lodge 
in  the  soul's  uppermost  chambers  there  opens  a 
prospect  unseen  by  those  below,  unbelieved  in 
by  these  latter,  may  be,  but  none  the  less  real. 
"  What,"  says  Bagehot  somewhere,  "  will  ever 
be  the  idea  of  the  cities  of  the  plain  con- 
cerning those  who  live  among  the  mountains  ?  " 
This  inner  discipline,  wherever  it  is  pursued, 
brings  sure  conviction,  amidst  all  vicissitudes, 
of  a  Divine  and  most  gracious  leading.  And 
thereby  does  it  disestablish  personal  pessimism. 
It  recognises  the  present  circumstance,  how- 
ever gruesome  seeming,  as  the  best  for  it.  It 
greets  each  event  as  a  spiritual  messenger.  It 


OP  DIVINE  LEADING.  243 

welcomes  the  hardship  that  makes  for  progress. 
It  recognises  to  the  full  that 

Nor  for  thy  neighbours,  nor  for  tb.ee, 
Be  sure  was  life  designed  to  be 
A  draught  of  dull  complacency. 

And  it  moves  to  the  final  scene  with  the  calm 
certitude  that  the  Guidance  which  through 
the  earthly  career  has  become  ever  more 
manifest  will  not,  at  that  hour,  quit  its  gracious 
function. 


XXVII. 
Amusement. 

BELTQION  and  amusement;  the  two  things 
are  here  together  on  this  God's  earth  of  ours ; 
have  been  here  from  the  beginning ;  and  we 
have  not  found  yet  the  formula  which  unites 
them.  Piety  still  looks  askance  at  comedy, 
and  knows  not  what  terms  it  should  make  with 
it.  It  is  singular  that  in  a  world  which  has 
never  been  without  philosophers  there  should 
have  been  all  along,  on  a  theme  so  vital,  a  con- 
fusion so  utter.  Cicero  introduces  the  ques- 
tion of  the  significance  of  laughter  only  to 
dismiss  it  as  insoluble.  Christian  thinkers 
handle  amusement  from  all  manner  of  stand- 
points, but  end  generally  by  leaving  their 
theme  in  the  air. 

There  is,  for  instance,  the  solution  of  what 
may  be  called  the  Christian  pessimism,  of 
which  Pascal  was  so  great  an  exponent.  To 
him  the  world's  amusements  were  the  most 
striking  illustration  of  the  essential  misery  of 


AMUSEMENT.  245 


most  human  lives.  Men  sought  amusement  in 
order  to  escape  from  themselves.  The  very 
name  "  diversion  "  let  out  the  fatal  secret.  To 
"  divert "  a  man  was,  what  ?  To  turn  his 
thought  away  from  his  wretched  self.  People 
gathered  in  crowds,  talked,  laughed,  gazed  at 
spectacles,  did  anything  rather  than  face  the 
ordeal  of  their  solitary  thought.  Pascal's 
is,  though  with  a  different  application,  pre- 
cisely the  picture  which  Lucretius  draws  of  the 
blase  Eoman  of  his  day,  who  rushed  from  town- 
house  to  country  villa,  and  was  happy  in 
neither.  "In  this  way  each  man  flees  from 
himself ;  but  this  self,  whom  he  cannot  escape 
from,  still  clings  to  him,  and  he  hates  it." 
The  description  is  true  enough  of  those  who 
are  in  the  sorry  plight  of  making  amusement 
their  one  business.  "  What  is  your  occupa- 
tion ?  "  is  the  question  put  to  a  young  Parisian 
in  a  French  romance.  "  Je  m'amuse,"  is  the 
reply.  Poor  wretch !  His  occupation  will  grow 
harder  every  day. 

But  the  pessimistic  point  of  view,  both 
Christian  and  non-Christian,  despite  the  sup- 
port it  receives  from  the  miserable  misuse  of 
amusement,  does  not  satisfy  us.  Nor  does 
another  religious  view,  still  in  vogue  in  some 


246        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

quarters,  which  regards  gaiety  and  laughter  as 
not  countenanced  by  the  example  of  Christ  or 
by  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel.  The  Puritan 
found  the  New  Testament  a  tremendously 
serious  book,  as  undoubtedly  it  is.  But  he 
discovered  no  laughter  there,  which  is  a  pity. 
Had  he  discerned  it  he  had  been  a  wholesomer 
man,  and  perhaps  have  won  England,  which  is 
a  laughter-loving  country,  to  his  side.  As  it 
was  the  Puritan  verdict  was  a  partisan  verdict, 
the  verdict  of  a  sect,  and  fatally  open  to  the 
raillery  of  the  wits : 

These  in  a  zeal  to  express  how  much  they  do 
The  organs  hate,  have  silenced  bagpipes  too ; 
And  harmless  maypoles  all  are  railed  upon, 
As  if  they  were  the  towers  of  Babylon. 

The  mediaeval  Church,  with  all  its  faults, 
understood  this  side  of  human  nature  better. 
In  its  miracle  plays,  out  of  which,  let  us 
remember,  the  modern  theatre  arose,  the  full 
swing  of  broadest  humour  in  immediate  con- 
tact with  all  that  was  sacred,  while  giving  rude 
shocks  to  our  modern  susceptibilities,  con- 
tained, nevertheless,  the  hint  of  a  truth  which 
the  Puritan  could  not  see.  It  was  the  truth 
that  gaiety  belongs  to  the  cosmical  scheme,  that 
laughter  lies  at  the  inmost  heart  of  things. 


AMUSEMENT.  247 


If  for  a  moment  we  could  conceire  of  life  in 
its  wholeness,  see  it  as  God  sees  it,  we  should 
perceive  a  strange  thing.  We  should  find  that 
everywhere  the  world  was,  at  the  same  time, 
laughing  and  weeping.  The  gay  and  the 
solemn  blend  there  at  every  moment.  The 
marriage  feast  synchronises  with  the  funeral 
service.  While  manhood  confronts  its  sternest 
problem  the  child  is  playing  in  the  street. 
One  such  God-view  of  the  world,  that  took  all 
in  at  a  glance,  would  be  enough  to  convince  us 
that  these  things  at  the  root  are  essentially 
one  ;  that  neither  can  forswear  the  other,  nor 
call  itself  complete  without  the  other.  We 
should  be  yet  more  deeply  convinced  of  this 
did  we  consider  the  inter-relations  of  work  and 
play,  of  the  serious  and  the  jocular.  All 
amusement  is,  on  its  other  side,  serious  work. 
A  drawing-room  entertainment  means  hard 
toil  for  servants ;  the  world  of  spectacle  is,  to 
a  great  host  of  our  fellows,  the  business  whicfr 
earns  the  daily  bread ;  the  man  who  jests  Oh 
the  stage  does  so  often  enough  with  deepest 
tragedy  at  his  heart.  There  could  be  no  such 
subtle  interchange  if  gay  and  grave  were  not 
woven  of  the  same  life-stuff. 

Wherever,   indeed,  we    cast    our    eyes    the 


248        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

same  lesson  meets  us.  The  universe  is  serious 
enough,  but  its  surface  everywhere  ripples  with 
gaiety.  It  is  ready  always  for  a  laugh. 
.2Eschylus  saw  that  ages  ago,  when  he  wrote  of 
the  "  anerithmon  gelasma  "  of  Old  Ocean.  The 
depths  below  might  be  sombre  and  fathomless, 
but  at  the  surface  was  "  unreckonable  laughter.'* 
Nature's  handiwork  completes  itself  always 
with  a  smile.  Sunshine  is  not  only  warmth 
and  light;  it  is  festivity.  The  young  of  all 
animals  salute  life  with  gay  gambollings. 
Their  glee  is  Nature's  theology,  asserting 
against  all  comers  that  the  world  is  a  good 
world  and  a  wholesome. 

What  is  passing  strange  is,  that  any  one 
coming  from  such  a  view  of  things  to  the  New 
Testament  should  imagine  an  incongruity.  A.s 
a  matter  of  fact,  Christ  in  His  teaching  takes 
the  cosmic  laughter  always  for  granted.  His 
world  is  a  festive  world.  The  parables  take 
merry-making  as  their  natural  background. 
The  children  pipe  in  the  market-place ;  the 
prodigal  son  comes  home  to  music  and  dancing ; 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  as  when  a  man 
makes  a  great  feast  and  invites  many.  The 
gladness  of  Jesus  at  the  Galilee  spring-time, 
His  rapture  at  the  song  of  the  birds  and  the 


AMUSEMENT.  249 


beauty  of  the  flowers,  are  to  us  a  religious 
revelation  just  as  much  as  are  His  most  solemn 
words  concerning  sin,  sorrow  and  death.  For 
they  are  His  reading  of  life.  Clouds  are  here, 
for  Him  and  us,  but  they  do  not  stop  the 
shining  of  the  sun.  The  laughter  of  the 
universe  is  the  reflex  of  God's  joy  which  He 
would  share  with  us. 

The  mistake  about  amusement  is  that  men 
invert  its  position.  They  go  to  amusement  to 
get  from  it  a  satisfaction  in  life,  whereas  it  is 
not  till  men  have  obtained  life's  satisfaction 
that  they  are  in  a  condition  to  be  amused.  The 
soul  can  never  be  satisfied  with  anything  lower 
than  itself.  Until  its  deepest  want  has  been 
met  its  harp  is  on  the  willows.  It  cannot  sing 
in  exile.  Men  called  Napoleon  "  the  Unamus- 
able."  Talma  might  play  before  him,  and  "  a 
pitful  of  kings,"  his  vassals,  form  part  of  the 
audience,  but  the  conqueror  extracted  no  gaiety 
from  the  performance.  That  is  the  Nemesis  of 
self.  When,  on  the  contrary,  the  soul  has 
found  its  true  life,  the  simplest  things  will 
serve.  A  man  then  learns  "the  heart's 
laugh."  He  will  be  another  example  of 
what  an  acute  thinker  has  declared  to  be  a 
psychological  law :  "  The  more  a  man  is  capable 


250         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

of  entire  seriousness  the  more  heartily  can  he 
laugh." 

The  Christian  Church  needs  in  the  present 
day  to  know  its  mind  on  the  subject  of 
amusements.  It  cannot  ignore  or  taboo  them, 
for  its  own  teaching,  properly  interpreted, 
shows  them  to  enter  deeply  into  the  Divine 
scheme  of  life.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must 
never  forget  that  the  prime  function  of 
religion  is  to  supply  the  inner  reconciliation 
without  which  there  is  no  true  amusement 
possible.  The  soul  cannot  laugh  its  own  laugh 
till  God  has  filled  it.  The  Church  has  also  to 
teach  the  world  the  ethics  of  amusement.  The 
"  gaiety  of  nations  "  can  only  increase  as  men 
imbibe  Christ's  unselfishness.  It  will  come 
never,  let  us  be  sure,  out  of  greed,  or  pride,  or 
egotism.  When,  in  society,  we  are  passing  a 
pleasant  evening,  be  sure  that  at  the  bottom 
of  it  lie  somebody's  loving  thought  and  self- 
sacrificing  labour.  And  any  amusement 
worthy  of  the  name  means,  let  us  remember, 
culture  of  some  sort.  Field  sports  train  the 
eye,  the  hand,  the  foot ;  are  an  education  of 
sense,  nerve  and  muscle.  The  growing  pas- 
sion for  them  in  modern  times  is  wary  Nature's 
set-off  to  the  lowering  of  vitality  which  town 


AMUSEMENT.  251 


life    and    sedentary   toil    are    bringing    upon 
civilised  peoples. 

Good  amusement  is,  then,  an  education ;  but 
it  is  something  more.     For  the  masses  it  is  a 
diversion  of  the  life-force  from  brute  gratifica- 
tion to  something  healthful  and  humanising. 
When    a    man   has    choice   of  half   a   dozen 
skilled  exercises  for  his  free  hours,  he  is  less 
likely   to   occupy  them  in  drink   or  vice.     A 
nation's  morale  in  this  respect  may  be  said  to 
be  largely  a  question  of  its  progress  in  amuse- 
ment.   We  have  advanced  from  the  time,  not  so 
far  distant,  which  made  possible  that  terrible 
story   Mozley  tells    of    Magdalen    College  in 
Bouth'p  day.     f  Says  Routh  to  the  chief  college 
officer,  one  morning,  '  Stop,  I  know  what  you 
are  going  to  tell  me.     One  of  the  Fellows  has 
died  drunk  in  the  night.'     'It  is  indeed  so.* 
The  President  exclaimed,  '  Stay,  let  me  guess.' 
He   guessed  right.     'There,  you  see,  I  knew 
very  well.    He's  just  the  fellow  to  die  drunk.' " 
In  England,    within  span  almost  of   our  own 
time,  to  drink  oneself  to  death  was  the  diver- 
sion of  a  gentleman  at  which  no  one  seemed 
surprised. 

The  Church,  for   ages,   with   more  or   less 
success,  has  been  teaching  men  to  pray.      It 


252        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

has  also,  it  now  realises,  to  teach  them  to  play. 
It  must  widen  its  programme  until  it  takes  in 
the  whole  man.  It  must  renounce  for  ever  the 
view  which  made  seriousness  take  offence  at 
mirth,  knowing  that  each  is  from  the  same 
source,  and  works  to  the  same  end.  Its 
attitude  to  humanity  must  be  less  of  a  menace 
and  more  of  an  encouragement.  For  ages  has 
it  busied  itself  with  the  religious  meaning  of 
tears.  Let  it  now  investigate  a  little  more  the 
religious  meaning  of  laughter.  Men,  we  learn 
on  the  highest  authority,  are  to  become  chil- 
dren to  understand  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
The  children's  play  is  God's  pledge.  The 
child-heart  delivers  to  us  the  open  secret.  In 
the  midst  of  this  tremendous  universe,  with  all 
its  mystery  and  all  its  tragedy,  these  little 
ones,  nearest  to  the  centre,  are  light  of 
heart.  The  Church  can  build  its  doctrine  on 
that  fact.  In  it  is  contained  the  whole 
Gospel. 


XXVIII. 
Dream   Mysteries. 

THE  position  accorded  to  dreams  as  a  factor 
in  religion  is,  we  might  almost  say,  one  of  the 
curiosities  of  modern  thought.  Schools  of 
belief  and  teaching  that  are  wide  as  the  poles 
asunder  are  united  in  regarding  them  as,  in 
this  respect,  of  the  highest  importance.  The 
Agnostic  and  the  Christian  believer  are  here 
at  one.  On  the  one  side  we  have  the  system 
of  evolutionary  philosophy  represented  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  which  looks  to  the  phenomena 
of  dreams,  as  experienced  by  primitive  and 
savage  races,  for  the  explanation  of  man's 
belief  in  the  soul,  the  future  state,  and  the 
whole  circle  of  ideas  generally  associated  with 
religion.  The  savage,  say  these  authorities, 
identified  dreams  with  realities.  When  in  a 
dream  he  saw  a  person  he  knew  to  be  dead 
he  concluded  he  was  still  alive  in  the  unseen. 
When  he  awoke  in  the  morning,  after  hunting 
during  the  night  in  dreams,  and  learned  from 


254        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

his  companions  that  his  body  had  lain  motion- 
less all  the  time,  it  was  his  "  soul "  that  must 
have  been  in  action.  And  the  souls  outside 
man  eventually  developed  into  gods.  If  this 
theory  be  taken  as  simply  a  natural  history  of 
ideas  it  is  well  enough.  When,  as  is  sometimes 
the  case,  it  is  employed  to  explain  away 
religion,  or  to  belittle  its  authority,  it  is  apt 
to  recoil  heavily  upon  the  hands  of  those  who 
thus  use  it.  For  when  all  is  said  this  dream 
theory  simply  exhibits  savage  man  as  in  con- 
scious relation  with  a  spiritual  world.  That  he 
blunders  pitifully  in  his  apprehension  of  that 
world  is  what  we  should  expect.  But  what 
destructive  criticism  has  to  face  is  the  fact 
here  elicited  that,  from  his  earliest  beginnings, 
man  has  been  haunted  by  these  apprehensions, 
pursued  by  these  intimations  from,  an  invisible 
around  him,  and  that,  despite  science's  latest 
developments,  he  is  so  still. 

When  we  have  disposed  of  the  savage's 
dreams  we  have  to  deal  with  our  own.  It  is 
only  their  familiarity  as  experiences  which 
makes  us  blind  to  the  profound  mysteries  they 
open  up.  As  a  recent  German  writer  has  well 
said,  it  is  unnecessary  for  us  to  look,  as  we 
commonly  do,  to  "the  other  side,"  "the 


DEEAM   MYSTERIES.  255 

beyond,"  for  the  unseen  and  the  spiritual. 
We  have  it  all  here  with  us,  woven  into  our 
flesh  and  blood.  And  when  we  come  to 
examine,  nowhere  is  it  more  markedly  in 
evidence  than  in  our  dream-life.  While 
science  is,  as  we  have  seen,  endeavouring  to 
explain  religion  by  dreams,  religious  men  from 
another  standpoint  offer  concurrent  evidence. 
The  Bible  is  a  great  dream-book  and  never 
apologises  for  the  fact.  The  prophets  dealt 
largely  in  dreams  and,  if  we  are  to  believe  the 
Acts,  it  was  to  a  dream  dreamed  at  Troas  that 
Europe  owed  its  Christianity. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  psychology  of  dreams, 
but  before  looking  at  that,  and  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  it,  let  us  put  together  one  or  two 
facts.  It  is  a  circumstance  significant  enough 
in  itself,  that,  inquire  where  we  will,  and 
amongst  the  most  cultivated  of  our  acquaint- 
ance, we  find  almost  invariably  that  in  this 
department  of  their  life  there  is  some  mystery 
to  confess. 

Which  of  those  who  say  they  disbelieve, 
Tour  clever  people,  but  has  dreamed  his  dream, 
Caught  his  coincidence,  stumbled  on  his  fact 
He  can't  explain  P 

Goethe  was  not  exactly  a  superstitious  per- 


256        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

sonage,  but  lie  says  that  his  grandfather  had 
revealed  to  him  in  dreams  beforehand  some  of 
the  principal  events  of  his  life.  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  avers  that  it  was  to  his  dreams  he 
owed  his  best  ideas.  In  his  work,  "  The  Un- 
conscious Mind,"  Dr.  Schofield  speaks  of  a 
clergyman  he  knew  "  whose  whole  life  was 
changed  by  hearing  a  sermon  preached  to 
himself  in  a  dream." 

Stories  of  this  kind,  and  they  could  be  multi- 
plied indefinitely,  are  not  to  be  disposed  of  by 
talk  of  stomachic  derangements.  But  it  does 
not  require,  in  order  to  be  in  contact  with  the 
deepest  dream  mysteries,  that  we  rake  about  in 
the  pages  of  literature.  It  will  be  enough  to 
turn  to  our  common  experience  and  to  examine 
what  we  find  there.  The  subject  is  a  difficult 
one,  not  only  from  its  elusiveness,  but  from  our 
natural  reticence.  We  touch  here  too  closely 
"the  deep  reserves  of  man."  About  these 
entirely  subjective  passages  of  our  life  weak 
natures  are  apt  to  exaggerate,  and  stronger 
ones  to  conceal.  "  Dicenda,  tacenda  locuti ; 
things  that  should  be  said,  and  things  better 
left  unspoken,  get  uttered."  But  most  of  us 
can  admit  experiences  similar  to  the  following. 
In  our  sleep  we  have  had  flung  upon  the  canvas 


DKEAM  MYSTERIES.  257 

of  our  consciousness  a  series  of  vivid  pictures, 
each  perfect  in  its  grouping,  colour  and  per- 
spective. The  present  writer  had  thus  flashed 
before  him,  not  long  ago,  a  stage  full  of  people, 
numbering  apparently  nigh  a  hundred  figures, 
of  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  where 
each  face  in  the  foreground  was  a  vividly  out- 
lined portrait,  and  where  the  costumes  and  sur- 
roundings were  marvellous  in  their  historical 
accuracy. 

Now  in  a  dream  perception  of  this  kind — not 
at  all,  we  imagine,  an  uncommon  one — observe 
the  problems  which  immediately  offer  them- 
selves. There  is  first  of  all  that  of  personality. 
It  seems  that  two  intelligences,  at  least,  are 
here  palpably  revealing  themselves.  There  is 
first  the  "  I "  to  whom  the  picture  is  presented, 
and  who  is  vividly  conscious  of  being,  not  the 
producer,  but  the  passive  spectator  of  it.  If 
he  knew  himself  as  the  producer  he  could  not 
be,  as  is  so  frequently  the  case,  filled  with 
astonishment  at  what  he  sees.  But  if  this 
"  ego  "  does  not  make  the  picture,  who  does  ? 
Who  is  the  artist  who  has  conceived  this 
scene,  grouped  it,  drawn  the  portraits,  clothed 
the  figures,  and  all  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  ? 
You  say  all  the  materials  were  stored  in  tho 

17 


258        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

memory-chests  of  the  brain.  Perhaps,  but 
who  determined  on  making  this  particular 
show  of  them,  who  arranged  them  into  this 
perfect  conception  ?  The  subject  of  the  dream 
is  himself,  as  a  rule,  no  artist.  How  comes  he, 
then,  into  the  presence  of  this  magnificent 
artistry  ? 

Any  attempt  at  explanation  here  seems  to 
involve  us  in  one  of  two  hypotheses.  The  first 
is  that  worked  out  with  so  much  ingenuity  by 
the  American  writer,  Mr.  T.  T.  Hudson,  of 
Boston,  in  his  "  Law  of  Psychic  Phenomena,'* 
the  theory,  that  is,  of  the  possession  by  each  of 
us  of  a  dual  mind.  A  modification  of  that 
view,  and  perhaps  an  improvement  on  it,  would 
be  the  supposition  of  powers  in  the  soul  lying 
quite  hidden  during  our  waking  hours,  and  re- 
quiring, in  our  present  life,  the  psychic  condi- 
tions of  sleep  or  trance  for  their  activity.  And 
that  this  contains,  at  least,  a  part  of  the  truth 
seems  borne  out  by  another,  and  perhaps  a 
rarer,  of  the  dream  experiences.  The  writer 
speaks  again  with  some  hesitancy,  not  sure 
whether  on  this  point  he  is  reporting  what  is 
to  any  extent  a  common  experience.  But  he 
can  testify  with  certainty  as  an  individual  to 
occasions,  coming  at  widely  separated  intervals 


DREAM  MYSTERIES.  259 

in  the  career,  when  the  soul,  under  the  condi- 
tions of  sleep,  has  become  conscious  of  itself 
with  a  power,  a  freshness  as  of  immortal 
youth,  a  felt  relation  to  the  illimitable  and  the 
eternal,  accompanied  by  a  thrilling  rapture,  as 
of  heaven's  central  life,  to  which  no  waking 
state  can  offer  a  parallel.  In  remembering 
such  times  one  recalls  Philo's  description  of 
"the  spiritual  ecstasy,"  when  "the  soul  having 
transcended  earthly  things,  is  seized  with  a 
sober  intoxication,  like  the  frenzy  of  the 
Corybantes,  only  with  a  nobler  longing,  and  so 
is  borne  upward  to  the  very  verge  of  spiritual 
things,  into  the  presence  of  the  great  King." 

The  other  supposition,  not,  be  it  observed, 
contradictory  to  the  former,  is  that  the  second 
personality  involved  apparently  in  some  of  our 
dreams  is  a  reality,  an  intelligence,  that  is,  out- 
side of  our  own,  and  making  use  of  us  tempor- 
arily as  its  instrument.  That  such  a  use  of  our 
bodily  and  mental  organs  by  another  will  and 
intelligence  is  possible  is  abundantly  clear  from 
the  experiments  of  the  Charcot  and  other 
schools  of  hypnotism.  But  once  we  have 
granted  this  of  the  relations  of  visible  human 
beings  we  have  nothing,  either  in  logic  or  in 
fact,  which  permits  us  to  deny  the  possibility 


260        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

of  a  similar  "  possession  "  of  us,  under  certain 
conditions,  by  intelligences  beyond  our  ken. 
It  is  indeed  only  when  we  admit  some  such 
hypothesis  that  certain  facts  otherwise  inexplic- 
able in  man's  spiritual  history  become  intelli- 
gible. It  is  along  this  line  mainly  that  a 
doctrine  of  prophetic  and  apostolic  inspiration 
credible  to  the  present  age  seems  likely  to  be 
built  up.  The  idea  of  a  lower  personality 
entered  into,  dominated  and  used  for  its  own 
purposes  by  a  higher,  the  possibility  and  fact 
of  which  is  rapidly  being  established  as  among 
the  truths  of  science,  will  become  the  modern 
rendering  of  the  New  Testament  doctrine  of 
inspiration,  that  "holy  men  of  old  spake  as 
they  were  moved." 

However  this  may  be,  enough,  perhaps,  has 
been  said  to  show  that  our  common  experiences 
as  dream-haunted,  whatever  the  special  explana- 
tions of  them  to  which  we  incline,  are  mysteries 
which  enter  very  closely  indeed  into  the  whole 
subject-matter  of  religion.  We  have  no  quarrel 
with  the  Evolutionist  for  tracing  the  beginning 
of  the  history  here.  His  mistake  commonly 
lies  in  not  pushing  the  investigation  far 
enough.  When  he  has  accepted  all  the  facts 
on  the  subject  which  are  to  hand,  and  faced 


DREAM  MYSTERIES.  261 

the  deductions  which  seem  fairly  drawn  from 
them,  he  will,  if  we  mistake  not,  find  him- 
self approaching  conclusions  for  which  his 
philosophy  has  not  yet  provided.  In  our  poet's 
word,  "  we  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made 
of,"  lies  more  than  appears  on  the  surface. 
We  shall  appreciate  it  better  when  we  more 
clearly  understand  what  dreams  are  made  of. 
A  study,  however  slight,  of  the  problems  they 
present  is  enough  at  least  to  shatter  the 
materialist  theory  of  life,  and  to  bring  home  to 
us  with  fresh  power  a  sense  of  that 

Sweet  strange  mystery 
Of  what  beyond  these  things  may  lie 
And  yet  remain  unseen! 


XXIX. 
The  Spiritual   Sense. 

THE  history  of  religion  has  been,  for  one 
thing,  largely  a  history  of  false  alarms.  Again 
and  again  has  the  enemy  breached  and  stormed 
positions  supposed  to  be  vital  for  her  defence, 
to  discover  that  the  captive  they  hoped  to  make 
was  not  there.  The  history  of  that  defence  is 
indeed  the  most  grotesque  of  stories.  In  some 
aspects  it  approaches  to  comedy.  We  see  men 
in  turn  entrenching  religion  behind  an  infallible 
Church ;  again  building  around  her  a  rampart 
of  infallible  Bibles ;  anon  barring  the  way  of 
attack  by  a  chevaux  de  frise  of  metaphysics. 
History,  philosophy,  science,  criticism,  are 
summoned  to  her  aid,  and  then,  when  the  fight 
is  hottest  and  the  defences  seem  giving  way 
at  every  point,  behold  !  the  beleaguered  one  is 
walking  quietly  and  unhurt  through  the  very 
ranks  of  the  foe  !  At  last  men  are  beginning 
to  discover  the  ludicrous  blunder  they  have 
been  making.  On  their  astonished  eyes  the 


THE  SPIBITTJAL  SENSE.  263 

truth  is  beginning  to  dawn  that  while  Church, 
Bible,  history  and  philosophy  have  all  their 
religious  uses,  it  is  not  upon  any  of  them  that 
religion  ultimately  rests.  Her  stronghold  is 
not  in  anything  that  man  has  done.  It  is  in 
what  he  is  in  himself.  Her  final  evidence  is  a 
psychological  one.  It  lies  in  the  existence  in 
humanity  of  "  the  spiritual  sense." 

What  is  meant  by  this  will  perhaps  be  best 
indicated  if  we  institute  a  parallel.  We  all 
know  what  is  meant  by  the  musical  sense. 
Now,  there  is  a  history  of  music  and  a  logic  of 
it.  Any  one  who  has  worked  at  harmony  and 
counterpoint  understands  how  intimately  it  is 
allied  to  purely  intellectual  processes.  It  has, 
besides,  institutions,  patrons,  endowments. 
But  the  prospects  of  music  as  a  force  rest  upon 
none  of  these  things.  They  rest  on  its  appeal 
to  a  distinct,  yet  fundamental,  element  in 
the  human  soul.  When  its  notes  fall  on 
the  ear  something  in  us  responds.  And  the 
response  is  peculiar.  It  is  not  an  answer  of 
the  intellect,  the  sensation  of  a  problem  solved, 
or  the  stir  of  any  of  the  senses.  It  is  a  deep 
thrill  of  consciousness,  unique,  different  from 
aught  else,  unable  to  interpret  itself  in  any 
other  way  except  than  that  it  is  an  answer. 


264        OURSELVES  AND  THE 


And  the  answer  is  to  some  external  reality  that 
fits  exactly  this  special  quality  of  the  soul. 
As  the  harmonic  sense  develops,  and  especially 
where  it  blossoms  out  into  the  flower  of  the 
higher  musical  genius,  it  becomes  ever  more 
vividly  conscious  of  this  external  reality  that 
answers  to  it.  The  musical  creators,  so  called, 
create  nothing.  They  only  discover  what  is 
there  already.  They  find  a  harmonic  universe 
with  its  laws  framed  from  eternity,  becoming 
ever  more  wonderful,  more  beautiful  in 
proportion  as  their  inner  sense  develops. 

The  point  here  is  that  this  external,  har- 
monic world  fits  exactly  our  internal  one. 
There  are  multitudes  of  unmusical  people. 
There  are  races  that  have  the  feeblest  musical 
perception.  But  always  in  proportion  as  the 
gift  is  developed  does  there  come  the  sense  of 
the  reality  of  its  outer  source  ;  the  sense  that 
the  music  is  a  true  witness  of  it.  Our 
ignorance  or  indifference  makes  no  difference 
to  the  objective  fact.  Moreover,  this  ignorance 
and  indifference  will  in  time  be  certainly  and 
universally  conquered.  What  music  has 
already  accomplished  in  man  is  evidence,  then, 
for  one  thing,  of  its  future  general  predomi- 
nance, and  for  another  of  its  perfect  corre- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SENSE.  265 

spondence  with  a  harmonic  system  outside  of 
man,  deeper  and  wider  than  himself. 

But  what  has  this  to  do  with  religion  and 
the  spiritual  sense  ?  Everything.  For  all  that 
has  just  been  said  applies  here  with  an  almost 
absolute  exactness.  The  part  played  by  the 
musical  sense  in  relation  to  its  world  is  the 
precise  counterpart  of  that  played  by  the 
spiritual  sense  in  relation  to  religion.  Perhaps 
the  loosest  and  most  badly-defined  word  in  our 
language  is  the  word  Faith.  In  the  lips,  not 
only  of  the  people  but  also  of  scholars  and 
divines,  it  has  been  made  to  connote  all  manner 
of  dissimilar  and  incongruous  elements.  But 
in  its  primitive  and  Biblical  signification  it 
stands  for  the  precise  function  of  the  soul  with 
which  we  are  now  trying  to  deal.  It  means 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  spiritual  sense, 
the  faculty  of  response  in  man  to  the  spiritual 
world  around  him.  It  is  the  soul's  retina,  on 
which  alone  the  light  that  streams  thence  can 
register  its  pictures.  Like  the  musical  faculty, 
it  has  been  slow  in  its  emergence.  For  long 
ages  of  his  history  man  seems  to  have  felt  no 
stir  of  it  within  him.  The  palaeolithic  times 
offer  not  a  trace  of  a  religious  sense.  Even 
now  it  is  most  irregularly  distributed.  In 


266        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

multitudes  it  seems  entirely  dormant,  if  at  all 
existent;  in  a  few  it  has  from  time  to  time 
exhibited  itself  in  a  commanding  and  over- 
powering potency.  The  parallel,  so  far,  seems 
complete. 

Can  we  go  further  and  say  that,  as  with  the 
musical  faculty,  the  inner  affirmations  of  this 
sense  can  be  trusted  as  corresponding  always 
to  an  outer  reality?  Here  lies  the  whole 
religious  question,  as  the  best  minds  of  to-day 
realise.  And  the  answer  tends  more  and  more 
to  an  affirmative.  Calvin  was  groping  towards 
this  position  in  his  statement  that  Faith  is  a 
matter  not  so  much  of  the  intellect  as  of  the 
heart.  Schleiermacher  is  so  sure  of  this 
ground  that  he  is  ready  to  stake  Christianity 
upon  it.  Pectus  est  quod  theologum  facit  is  the 
corner-stone  of  his  system.  The  one  thing  for 
the  religious  teacher  to  accomplish,  says  he,  is 
to  reach  that  stratum  of  the  consciousness 
where  this  sacred  instinct  lies  concealed. 
With  Eitschl  the  idea  of  the  spiritual  sense 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  his  doctrine  of  "value 
judgments."  It  is  singular,  however,  that 
having  gone  so  far,  he  does  not  go  further; 
that  while  regarding  the  soul's  instinctive 
feeling  in  the  presence  of  Christ  as  the 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SENSE.  267 

greatest  of  the  Christian  evidences,  he  should 
speak  as  he  does  of  those  inner  responses  to 
the  spiritual  universe  outside  -which  he  dis- 
parages as  mysticism.  What  else  was  Christ's 
own  attitude  to  the  spiritual  universe  but  a 
mystical  one ;  what  revelation  had  He  to  offer 
except  the  response  of  His  perfect  spiritual 
sense  to  the  infinite  spiritual  system  which 
corresponded  to  it?  But  that  is  mysticism, 
which  not  Bitschl  nor  any  one  else  will  ever 
eliminate  from  the  essence  of  religion. 

But  to  come  closer.  What  is  the  function 
of  this  spiritual  sense,  and  how  does  it  affirm 
its  authority  ?  We  have  only  to  look  carefully 
at  its  operation  in  ourselves  to  discover  at  once 
how  absolutely  different  it  is  from  the  pro- 
cesses of  mere  reasoning.  It  mingles  at  every 
point  with  reasoning,  but  is  in  itself  as  distinct 
from  it  as  is  the  emotion  raised  by  a  Beethoven 
sonata.  One  might  describe  it  as  the  soul's 
thrill  at  the  approach  of  the  Divine.  Religious 
literature  is  the  attempt  to  put  that  thrill  into 
words.  Eeligious  history  is  the  story  of  the 
great  creative  spirits  who  have  felt  it  at  first 
hand,  and  of  its  communication  by  them  to 
others.  What  in  varying  degrees  was  realised 
by  these  founders,  and  by  Christ  in  a  trans- 


268        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

cendent  degree,  was  a  sense  of  the  universe 
as  spiritual,  of  holiness  as  the  supreme  value, 
of  the  external  world,  with  its  natural  forces, 
as  the  veil  of  a  Supreme  Thought  and  Love,  of 
man  as  in  himself  a  revelation  of  God,  and  as 
in  immediate  contact  with  God.  The  spiritual 
sense  immediately  recognises  itself  in  other 
souls  and  rejoices  in  the  contact.  Eeligious 
fellowships  arise  from  the  play  of  its  law  of 
affinity.  It  knows  instinctively  where  its 
nutriment  lies,  and  has  processes  of  its  own 
for  extracting  and  assimilating  it.  It  finds 
in  itself  a  supreme  mandate  to  develop  at  the 
expense  of  the  lower  nature  allied  with  it.  It- 
works  towards  the  evolution  of  a  body  more 
expressive  of  its  needs.  In  the  rarer  natures 
the  effort  leads  often  to  physical  disaster.  A 
St.  Francis,  a  Pascal,  a  Catherine  of  Siena, 

Die  of  having  lived  too  much 
In  their  large  hours. 

But  what  they  attempted  too  early  and  too 
strenuously  the  race  will  arrive  at  later.  We 
need  not  be  impatient  with  the  rate  of  move- 
ment if  God  is  not.  The  pace,  after  all,  is  not 
a  sluggish  one  when  we  consider  the  obstacles 
in  the  way.  The  spiritual  sense  is  so  far  only 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SENSE.  269 

at  the  beginning  of  its  work.  It  is  at  present 
not  so  much  a  master  as  a  reporter.  The  flesh 
is  still  in  possession.  When  Massillon  preached 
before  Louis  XIV.  on  the  carnal  and  the 
spiritual  in  man,  the  monarch  exclaimed,  "  Ah ! 
here  are  two  men  I  know  very  well !  "  Of  the 
two  it  is  to  be  feared  he  preferred  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  former.  He  represented  here  that 
majority  of  whom  it  may  still  be  said — 

With  the  true  best  alack  !  how  ill  agrees 
The  best  that  thou  wouldest  choose  ! 

But  the  history  of  the  spiritual  sense,  how- 
ever disappointing  to  our  impatience  as  the 
record  of  a  religious  triumph,  is  almost  perfect 
as  a  piece  of  religious  evidence.  We  need 
scarce  any  other.  If,  to  revert  to  our  earlier 
analogy,  all  the  musical  institutions  were 
destroyed,  the  world's  present  harmonic  sense 
and  culture  would  make  it  impossible  for  even 
such  a  catastrophe  to  result  in  any  real  loss. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  religion.  Could  all 
the  external  record  of  its  past,  its  systems,  its 
literatures,  be  imagined  as  lost,  its  power  and 
authority  would  hardly  be  affected.  The 
spiritual  sense  as  we  now  have  it  contains  the 
essence  of  these  things  in  itself,  and  would 


270        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

reproduce  them,  with  new  elements  added  of 
the  eternal  revelation.  And  that  this  sense  is 
authoritative,  that  its  report  of  the  spiritual 
world  is  authentic  and  trustworthy,  is  a 
conviction  as  well  founded  as  that  of  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  musical  faculty,  or 
indeed  as  that  by  which  we  affirm  the  outside 
world  revealed  to  us  by  the  senses.  All  these 
affirmations  rest  ultimately  on  an  act  of  Faith 
— the  belief,  namely,  that  our  nature  is  not 
being  befooled ;  that  its  reporters  are  telling  us 
the  truth,  and  not  a  lie. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  Church,  and 
specially  of  the  religious  teacher,  to  develop 
the  spiritual  sense.  The  real  end  of  worship 
and  of  exhortation  is  not  to  root  men  in  tradi- 
tion or  to  drill  them  in  logic,  or  to  cram  them 
with  facts.  It  is  to  find  the  mystic  chord 
which  vibrates  to  the  breath  of  the  Unseen.  It 
answers  always  to  the  true  note.  Often  the 
thrill  comes  apart  from  any  words.  Tolstoi  was 
converted  from  Atheism  by  studying  the  faith 
of  simple  people.  When  a  man  has  felt  God 
his  neighbour  knows  it.  That  is  where  the 
true  preacher's  power  lies.  Beyond  all  elo- 
quence, all  learning,  its  secret  is  in  the  fulness 
and  fineness  of  his  spiritual  sense.  And  that 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SENSE.  271 

grows  in  him  by  careful  cultivation.  He 
above  all  others  needs  to  ponder  the  old  Greek 
saying  :  "  The  gods  sell  us  all  the  goods  they 
give  us."  We  cannot,  that  is,  get  the  best 
without  paying  for  it.  Inferior  substitutes  for 
the  true  power  can  be  had  at  specified  rates, 
but  for  this  there  is  no  haggling  and  no 
cheapening.  Those  who,  in  pulpits  or  else- 
where, desire  to  be  irrefutable  evidences  of  the 
heavenly  kingdom  must  offer  their  whole  selves 
as  the  price. 


XXX. 

Our  Thought  World. 

WE  are  all  of  us  absolute  monarchs  and  govern 
each  an  empire  compared  with  which  old  Rome 
or  the  modern  Greater  Britain  are,  in  their 
extent,  as  a  country  parish.  Every  man's 
house,  we  say,  is  his  castle ;  but  his  mind  is  a 
world.  It  is  hardly  an  extravagance  of  Jean 
Paul  Richter's  that  "  a  new  universe  is  created 
every  time  a  child  is  born."  All  our  life  is  a 
thinking.  According  to  the  quality  of  our 
thought  is  the  quality  of  our  being.  Our 
humdrum  and  bourgeois  age  has  dulled  its 
taste  for  real  pleasure.  It  might  take  lessons 
from  those  old  Greek  philosophers  who,  instead 
of  blocking  themselves  with  expensive  arrange- 
ments, reduced  their  physical  wants  to  a  mini- 
mum in  order  to  enjoy,  day  by  day,  untram- 
melled, the  luxury  of  their  own  thoughts. 
For,  as  they  had  discovered,  our  thought 
world  is  our  real  world.  It  should  surely  be 
our  first  consideration  to  explore  this  realm, 


ODE  THOUGHT  WORLD.  273 

of  which  we  so  strangely  find  ourselves  in 
possession  ;  to  trace  its  boundaries,  to  under- 
stand its  laws,  to  unearth  its  hid  treasures,  to 
investigate  the  Beyond  of  which  it  gives  such 
wonderful  hints. 

We  have  just  said  that  our  thought  world 
is  our  real  world,  and  it  may  be  worth  while 
at  the  beginning  to  show  that  the  statement 
is  more  than  a  phrase.  Some  of  us  have  a 
confused  enough  notion  of  reality.  Nothing, 
for  instance,  seems  more  certain  to  us  than 
the  solid  "  outside  of  things,"  with  which  we 
are  constantly  in  contact.  Dogmas  and  doc- 
trines may  be  illusion,  but  the  earth  we  tread 
on,  the  wall  we  run  against,  the  cloud  that 
rains  on  us,  the  sun  that  shines,  are,  at  any 
rate,  a  piece  of  solid  fact  which  nobody  can 
dispute.  This  "  solid  fact "  of  the  visible  and 
touchable,  say  some  aggressive  disputants,  is 
indeed  all  we  do  know.  The  invisibles  about 
which  metaphysicians  and  theologians  discourse 
are  mere  doctrinal  ghosts.  When  we  talk  of 
the  things  we  see  and  handle  we  at  least  know 
where  we  are. 

Yet  a  moment's  reflection  should  show  us 
the  shallowness  of  this  view.  The  outside 
world  is  nothing  to  us  but  a  series  of 

is 


274        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

thoughts.  Our  mind  really  constructs  it  for 
us.  We  talk  of  the  world's  colours,  its  scents, 
its  sounds,  but  there  would  be  no  such  things 
as  colours,  scents,  or  sounds  apart  from  a  mind 
which  can  be  affected  in  these  particular  ways. 
The  fact  of  one  set  of  vibrations  producing  in 
us  a  sensation  we  call  "  sound,"  and  another 
set  a  sensation  we  call  "  sight,"  is  a  mystery 
first  and  most  of  all  of  the  perceiving  mind. 
That  the  external  world  can  be  in  any  sense 
the  same  thing  as  the  image  of  it  formed  in 
our  brain,  is  a  notion  which  the  crudest 
thinker,  as  soon  as  the  problem  is  fairly 
before  him,  must  dismiss  as  impossible.  That 
the  "  something  outside "  which  affects  us  in 
these  myriad  ways  is  a  reality,  and  that  our 
relations  with  it  are  truly  represented  by  the 
reports  of  our  senses,  is  a  thing  of  which  we 
have  and  can  have  no  logical  proof.  The 
world's  very  first  demand  of  us — to  believe, 
namely,  that  it  is  such  a  world  as  our  thought 
presents — is  a  sheer  act  of  faith. 

That  things  are  thus  with  us,  that  our 
thought  world,  far  more  than  any  external, 
is  the  one  we  know,  will  appear  more  plainly 
when  we  consider  the  mental  laws  and  the  way 
they  work  in  constructing  our  world  for  us. 


OUR  THOUGHT  WORLD.  275 

Have  we  ever  considered  what  happens  when 
we  "  see  "  an  object,  say,  a  boat  moving  on  a 
river?  Light  rays,  propagated  by  vibrations 
of  inconceivable  velocity,  falling  upon  the 
retina  have  produced  there  an  image.  Upon 
this  retina-picture  the  mind  now  begins  its 
marvellous  work.  By  one  act  it  gathers  all  the 
colour  and  form  impressions  it  has  received 
into  a  single  unity ;  by  another  act  it  classifies 
this  unity,  separating  its  individual  qualities 
from  its  common  ones,  and  by  virtue  of  these 
latter  placing  the  object  into  the  category 
called  "  boat  "  ;  another  act  gives  to  the  boat's 
motion  a  cause,  either  the  action  of  rowers,  or 
perhaps  of  a  steam  propeller.  Vastly  more  are 
the  mental  actions  and  laws  concerned  than 
these,  but  enough  are  here  to  show  that  our 
boat  on  the  river,  as  known  at  least  to  us,  is  a 
work,  a  very  large  proportion  of  which  belongs 
to  our  own  brain.  The  sense  perception ;  the 
acts  by  which  we  unify  and  classify  it;  the 
placing  of  it  in  space  and  time ;  and  that 
strange  last  act  by  which  we  are  irresistibly 
led  to  attribute  its  motion  to  a  cause,  are  all 
the  products,  not  so  much  of  the  material 
object  as  of  the  marvellous  laws  within  us. 
The  external  world,  before  it  reaches  us,  has 


276        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

we  see,  become  a  manufactured  article,  and  the 
machinery  is  in  ourselves.  The  wonder  of  it 
all  and  the  awe  of  it  grow  upon  us  as  we 
realise  that  these  laws  are  none  of  our  making; 
they  were  here,  we  perceive,  in  all  the  minds 
that  were  before  us;  are  in  all  the  minds 
around  us ;  and  the  very  world  itself  is  built 
and  framed  in  accordance  with  them. 

Indeed,  from  whatever  aspect  we  view  this 
inner  kingdom  of  ours,  the  mystery  of  it 
deepens.  What  are  called  clever  people  are 
apt  to  be  vain  sometimes  of  their  mental 
achievements.  They  would  be  less  so  if  they 
remembered  that  most  of  these  achievements 
are  carried  on  by  a  power  that,  while  within 
them,  is  yet  outside  their  own  will  and  even 
their  own  consciousness.  Our  thought  world 
carries  on  its  operations  largely  without  con- 
sulting us.  The  real  creator  in  us  is  the 
Unconscious.  In  that  abysmal  depth,  lying 
somewhere  beneath  our  formulated  thought, 
the  operations  are  going  on  which,  by-and-by, 
emerge  on  our  view  as  completed  ideas.  Every 
thinker,  for  instance,  knows  precisely  the 
experience  which  Stevenson  thus  hits  off  about 
his  own  work :  "  Unconscious  thought,  there  is 
the  only  method;  macerate  your  subject,  let  it 


OUE  THOUGHT  WOKLD.  £7? 

boil  slow,  then  take  the  lid  off  and  look  in — 
and  there  your  stuff  is,  good  or  bad."  An 
excellent  prescription  for  the  young  writer,  but 
the  very  terms  of  it  show  that,  instead  of 
having  been  the  performers  ourselves,  we  are 
mainly  spectators,  waiting  on  the  operations  of 
another,  who  in  mysterious  ways  and  in  obscure 
depths  beneath  the  surface,  is  doing  the  think- 
ing for  us.  "  Is  this  my  idea  ?  "  we  say  as  it 
flashes  into  our  mind.  Why,  no  one  is  more 
surprised  at  it  than  ourselves.  It  is  as  much 
ours  as  the  sunshine  reflected  on  our  lens.  The 
illuminated  lens  is  ours,  but  the  light  has 
travelled  from  afar. 

But  the  fact  that  our  thought  world  is,  to  so 
large  an  extent,  worked  for  us  rather  than  by 
us,  must  not  blind  us  as  to  our  share  in  the 
operations.  Over  a  large  part  of  its  surface 
our  will  reigns  supreme,  and  can  make  of  it 
either  a  desolation  or  a  paradise.  Our  thoughts 
are  our  companions,  which  we  cannot  get  rid 
of.  We  may  shake  off  every  other  society,  but 
not  this.  It  is  the  merest  common-sense, 
therefore,  to  make  it  as  good  as  possible.  But 
there  is  no  royal  road.  A  man  may  buy  his 
way  nowadays  into  all  manner  of  social  circles, 
but  his  coin  is  not  current  in  this  domain, 


278        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Nor  will  rank  serve.  The  son  of  Louis  XIV., 
the  Dauphin,  had  for  instructors  Bossuet  and 
Huet.  The  one  wrote  for  him  "The  Discourse 
on  Universal  History " ;  the  other  edited  for 
him  "  The  Delphine  Classics."  After  he  had 
outgrown  his  schooldays  the  object  of  these 
cares  never  touched  a  book,  and  about  the  only 
thing  recorded  of  him  is  that  he  was  fond  of 
killing  weasels  in  a  barn.  The  lad  was  heir  to 
a  throne,  and  this  was  his  inner  empire !  Of 
all  the  waste  that  goes  on  in  our  extravagant 
world  the  waste  of  our  thought  possibilities  is 
the  worst.  Lords  of  this  inner  realm,  we  might 
stretch  its  boundaries  till  they  touch  the 
illimitable;  could  make  every  inch  of  its  sur- 
face rich  with  flower  and  fruit ;  could  populate 
it  with  the  noblest  minds;  could  open  it  to 
highest  inspirations,  to  the  very  breath  and 
prospect  of  the  Infinite.  Instead,  most  of  us 
are  content  to  run  up  a  log  hut  on  its  border, 
to  scratch  its  surface  for  a  few  kitchen 
vegetables,  and  to  leave  the  rest  as  barren  as 
Sahara. 

With  a  well-tended  thought  world  all  his 
own,  no  man  need  call  himself  poor  or  fettered. 
Moneybags  may  voyage  in  his  yacht  to  southern 
seas  and  be  very  much  bored  over  the  business. 


OUR  THOUGHT  WORLD.  279 

The  worker  at  his  bench,  if  he  know  his  inner 
privilege,  can  voyage  to  fairer  realms  and  feel 
no  fatigue.  Let  no  man  think  his  taskwork  a 
monotony,  though  it  be  pin-making,  or  trench- 
digging,  while  his  mind-realm  is  his  own. 
There,  as  he  hammers  or  digs,  he  may  call  up 
what  scenery  or  what  action  he  wills.  It  is 
here  that  thought  life  surpasses  experience. 
In  experience  we  take  what  comes,  the  rough 
with  the  smooth.  In  our  inner  world  we  can 
choose.  And  surely  this  is  enough  to  give  zest 
to  the  commonest  career  that,  at  will,  we  can 
live  over  again  our  choicest  moments,  recall 
those  elect  days  when  we  touched  life's  best, 
and  make  our  whole  interior  radiant  with  that 
reflected  glory. 

There  are  innumerable  aspects  of  this  theme 
which  we  pass  over  in  order  to  touch,  in 
closing,  one  on  which  the  modern  mind  is 
painfully  exercised ;  the  question,  that  is,  of 
our  thought  world  as  related  to  a  future  life. 
Readers  of  Schopenhauer  will  remember  how, 
in  pursuit  of  his  favourite  doctrine  of  the 
priority  and  predominance  of  the  will,  both  in 
man  and  the  world,  he  seeks  to  belittle  the 
intellect.  Our  consciousness,  he  declares,  is 
the  mere  product  and  parasite  of  the  brain ; 


280        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

grows  with  it,  decays  with  it,  dies  with  it.  It 
is  the  old  argument  of  the  Epicureans,  which 
their  great  poet  Lucretius  has  expressed  with 
unsurpassable  force.  But  it  all  rests  upon  a 
fallacy  which  a  schoolboy  ought  to  perceive. 
For  when  we  propose  to  make  reason  depend 
upon  a  brain  we  must  extend  our  reference, 
and  make  the  Universal  .Reason,  the  mind  we 
discern  everywhere  at  work  in  the  cosmos, 
dependent  upon  a  brain  also ;  "  which,"  as  the 
logic  books  say,  "  is  absurd."  True  psychology 
is  coming  more  and  more  to  realise  that  the 
thought  world  within  us  uses  the  brain  as  an 
instrument  rather  than  as  a  cause.  The 
instrument  is  no  more  the  creator  of  the 
thought  than  Beethoven's  piano  was  the 
creator  of  his  music.  The  instrument  might 
wear  out,  but  the  music  can  be  reproduced 
elsewhere. 

The  truer  and  higher  our  mind  life  becomes 
the  more  sure  are  we  that  our  mind  is  fed,  not 
by  brain  activities  merely,  but  more,  and 
chiefly,  by  Another  Mind  whose  celestial  ray 
streams  into  ours,  and  in  whose  Immortal  Life 
we  live.  The  fine  thought  of  Plutarch  con- 
cerning the  daimon  or  guardian  spirit  of 
Socrates,  that  it  was  "the  influence  of  a 


OUR  THOUGHT  WORLD.  281 

superior  intelligence  and  a  diviner  soul  operat- 
ing on  the  soul  of  Socrates  "  can  be  taken  as 
true  of  all  the  nobler  thought  life.  Our  bodies 
may  wear  out  and  our  brains  ;  but  the  thought 
world  which  lies  behind  them  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  realm  of  its  own,  with  laws  of  its  own. 
By  no  possibility,  as  Tyndall  himself  confessed, 
can  we  find  the  nexus  between  muscular  and 
nerve  energy  and  a  state  of  consciousness. 
They  are  a  world  apart.  Death,  which  divides 
the  two,  destroys  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  An  ancient  word  still  expresses  as 
much  as  we  know.  "  Then  shall  the  dust 
return  to  the  earth  as  it  was ;  and  the  spirit 
shall  return  unto  God  who  gave  it." 


xxxr. 
Morals  and   Eternity. 

THE  conception  of  eternity  is  a  differentia  of 
humanity.  Apart  from  any  question  of  a 
future  life,  the  mere  fact  that  man  is  capable 
of  this  immense  idea,  that  it  lies  there  as  part 
of  his  permanent  brain  furniture,  places  him  in 
a  class  apart.  Said  an  English  farm  labourer 
once  to  the  present  writer:  "There  are  two 
things  that  press  upon  my  mind ;  one  is  the 
thought  of  boundless  space,  and  the  other  the 
idea  of  time  without  end."  It  was  pleasant  to 
hear  the  words.  The  humble  toiler,  unassisted, 
had  come  upon  the  two  things  that  have  gone 
most  to  the  making  of  man,  considered  as  a 
thinking  being.  "The  capacity  of  becoming 
conscious  of  the  Infinite,"  says  Lotze,  "  is  the 
distinguishing  endowment  of  the  human 
mind." 

But  the  study  of  infinity,  especially  in  its 
aspect  of  eternity,  has  had  some  curious 
results.  The  effect  on  the  human  conscious- 


MORALS  AND  ETERNITY.  283 

ness  and  on  human  conduct  has  not  been  by 
any  means  uniform.  There  have  been,  in  fact, 
the  widest  divergencies  in  the  mode  of  conceiv- 
ing eternity,  with  all  manner  of  strange  corre- 
sponding effects  on  morals  and  life.  Nowhere 
than  on  this  theme  has  religious  thinking  been 
more  confused;  nowhere  has  religious  action 
blundered  at  times  more  pitifully.  A  glance 
over  some  of  the  diverse  paths  along  which 
thought  has  stumbled  here  may  help  us  in  our 
quest  for  the  proper  track. 

There  is,  for  instance,  a  view  of  eternity 
which,  followed  to  its  logical  issue,  would 
leave  us  simply  with  a  morality  of  "go  as 
you  please."  In  this  scheme  the  only  eternity 
is  an  eternity  of  matter  and  force.  Matter  is 
eternal,  force  is  persistent.  The  universe  dis- 
closes no  such  thing  as  final  causes,  no  such 
thing  as  pre-determined  ends.  We  must 
dismiss  all  idea  of  progression,  of  dramatic 
denouement.  A  complete  universe  can,  by  the 
very  terms,  make  no  advance.  The  changes 
which  science  records  are,  as  an  American 
advocate  of  this  view  puts  it,  to  be  considered 
simply  as  "  variations  of  cosmical  weather." 
This  odd  combination  of  Spinoza  and  Buch- 
ner,  of  an  outworn  idealistic  determinism, 


284         OURSELVES  AKD  THE  UNIVERSE. 

with  an  equally  outworn  materialism,  is  not 
likely  to  keep  any  lengthened  hold  on  modern 
thinking.  Science,  for  one  thing,  is  too  dead 
against  it.  An  a  priori  philosophy  which 
denies  progression  because  it  contradicts  an 
unproved  abstract  idea,  has  little  chance 
against  an  ever  accumulating  body  of  facts 
which  spell  progression  and  nothing  else. 
Evolution  becomes  here,  as  against  con- 
tradictors of  this  order,  the  modern  basis  of 
faith.  It  sweeps  magnificently  into  line  with 
the  New  Testament  doctrine  of  great  consum- 
mations, of  the 

One  far  off  divine  event 

To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

But  the  concept  of  eternity  which  pictures 
for  us  a  changeless  universe,  an  eternity  of 
endless  and  aimless  rearrangements  of  matter 
and  force,  is  not  only  unscientific  ;  it  is  un- 
moral. Were  it  accepted  the  only  morality 
could  be  one  of  convenience.  To  the  extent 
it  is  believed  in,  human  life  becomes  a  jest  or 
a  pessimist  tragedy. 

Quum  tamen  incolumis  videatur 
Summa  manere, 

cries   Lucretius.     Despite  all  surface  appear- 


MORALS  AXD   ETERNITY.  285 

ances,  "  the  great  sum  of  things  is  seen  to 
remain  unchanged."  And  the  conclusion  is,  as 
it  must  be  of  all  thinking  along  that  line, 
"  Eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 
Religious  aspiration  in  a  brute  universe, 
in  which  by  some  strange  chance  man's 
fevered  consciousness  figures  for  one  brief 
moment,  must  be  a  joke  for  the  stars.  The 
only  logical  life  course  should  be  Omar 
Khayyam's  : 

Drink,  for  we  know  not  whence  we  came  nor  why  ; 
Drink,  for  we  know  not  why  we  go,  nor  where. 

Sanctity  is  absurd  in  a  cosmos  of  indifference. 
The  foundation  for  what  morality  were  left  us 
would  lie  in  Voltaire's  answer  to  the  man  who 
wanted  to  know  why,  on  such  principles,  he 
might  not  commit  robbery  or  murder.  "Be- 
cause, my  friend,  if  you  do,  you  will  probably 
get  hanged." 

It  is  not,  however,  solely  in  outside  specula- 
tions of  this  order  that  we  find  a  misuse  of  the 
idea  of  eternity.  In  quarters  nearer  home 
misconceptions  about  it  have  brought  strange 
and  sinister  results.  Religious  thought  on  this 
theme  has  been  continually  stumbling  upon 
two  mistakes.  One  is  the  identification  of 


286        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

eternity  with  the  idea  of  cataclysm,  and 
catastrophe.  Successive  generations  of  Chris- 
tian people  have  gone  on  dividing  their 
world-system  into  two  parts — one  the  time  in 
which  they  lived,  which  was  about  to  come  to 
an  end,  and  the  other,  "  eternity,"  which  was 
to  be  ushered  in  by  an  overwhelming  cosmic 
outburst.  This  idea,  borrowed  in  the  first 
instance  from  the  Jewish  apocalyptic  systems 
which  flourished  so  abundantly  in  the  post- 
exilic  and  pre-Christian  eras,  had  full 
possession  of  the  Early  Church,  and  has, 
since  then,  continually  been  renewed.  The 
Christian  Fathers,  age  after  age,  see  in  the 
circumstances  of  their  time  exactly  the 
prophetically  declared  conditions  which  are  to 
usher  in  the  final  scene.  Under  this  idea  great 
panics  have  at  different  epochs  swept  over 
society.  One  can  hardly  imagine  a  more 
terrible  state  of  affairs  than  that  which 
prevailed  in  Western  Europe  when  Christen- 
dom reached  the  eve  of  its  thousandth  year. 
Prophets  everywhere  declared  that  this  was 
the  end  of  the  age.  The  people  believed  them 
and  shut  up  their  shops,  left  the  crops  to  rot 
in  the  fields,  broke  off  from  family  relationship, 
and  gathered  in  famine-stricken  bands  to  await 


MORALS  AND   ETERNITY.  287 

the  dread  Appearing.  The  sensation  of  sheer 
terror  probably  never  reached  such  a  height  in 
this  world  as  when  the  ebbing-  moments  of  the 
fated  year  ran  out  to  the  close. 

The  lesson  of  these  delusions  has,  however, 
not  even  yet  been  universally  learned.  In  a 
recently  published  "  History  of  the  Plymouth 
Brethren "  the  author,  a  competent  and 
cultured  observer  who  has  studied  the  move- 
ment from  within,  declares  that  "  if  any  one 
had  told  the  first  Brethren  that  three-quarters 
of  a  century  might  elapse  and  the  Church  be 
still  on  earth,  the  answer  would  probably  have 
been  a  smile,  partly  of  pity,  partly  of  disap- 
proval, wholly  of  incredulity."  The  moral 
result  of  such  a  view,  as  pointed  out  by  the 
same  writer,  is  instructive.  The  men  and 
women  who  have  held  this  persuasion  have 
systematically  withdrawn  themselves  from  large 
and  important  parts  of  human  interests  and 
responsibilities.  They  have  left  it  to  others 
to  fight  the  battles  of  reform  and  of  freedom. 
The  early  Brethren  stigmatised  the  movement 
of  Clarkson,  Macaulay  and  Wilberforce  for  the 
abolition  of  the  slave  trade  as  "unholy." 
They  discouraged  philanthropy  and  even 
missions.  Had  the  world  been  left  to  them 


288        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

it  would  have  had  no  art,  no  science  and  no 
literature.  It  is  surely  time  that  this  view  of 
eternity,  as  of  a  kind  of  approaching  tidal  wave 
that  will  by-and-by  roll  in  and  submerge  every- 
thing that  is,  should  be  recognised  by  sensible 
men  as  provedly  false  and  provedly  immoral, 
and  as  such  to  be  henceforth  dropped  and  done 
with. 

And  with  this  must  go  another  idea  that  has 
prevailed  even  more  widely.  It  is  that  view 
which  has  regarded  eternity  as  a  kind  of  infinite 
Topsy-turvydom,  in  which  all  the  principles  of 
Divine  government  which  we  recognise  in  the 
present  state  are  to  be  neutralised  and  reversed. 
The  idea  that  the  God  we  know  could  be  also 
the  God  of  the  torturing  hell  of  mediaeval 
theology  is  to  a  really  serious  mind  simply 
unthinkable.  That  because  a  man  dies  God's 
whole  character  should  change  towards  him 
and  become  wholly  dreadful,  is  a  notion 
possible  only  to  a  barbarous  and  illogical  age. 
It  is  as  if  a  mother  should  love  and  cherish  her 
child  so  long  as  it  keeps  awake,  but,  the 
moment  it  falls  asleep,  should  change  to  a 
monster  and  devour  it.  There  is  only  one 
consolation  in  studying  the  long  reign  of  this 
theological  nightmare,  and  that  is,  that  the 


MOBALS    AND     ETERNITY.  289 

laws  of  the  human  mind  have  always  declined 
to  deal  with  it  seriously.  The  imagination 
refused  to  grasp  it.  Conscience  would  not  be 
governed  by  it.  In  the  ages  when  its  reign  as 
a  dogma  was  most  complete,  character  and 
morals  were,  in  fact,  at  the  lowest  ebb. 
Humour  made  havoc  among  its  terrors.  The 
fourteenth  century  bards  laughed  at  the  priests 
and  their  stories.  The  human  reaction  reached 
its  culmination  in  Rabelais,  who  treated  hell  in 
the  manner  of  Lucian,  and  made  Europe  roar 
at  the  jocosities  of  the  under-world. 

It  is  time  we  reached  that  nobler  concept  of 
eternity  which  is  at  once  the  essence  both  of 
true  religion  and  of  true  morals.  The  more  we 
study  it,  both  in  the  New  Testament  and  in 
that  other  revelation  given  in  the  ever-growing 
human  consciousness,  the  more  we  shall  realise 
the  inadequacy  and  the  falseness  of  the 
travesties  we  have  been  sketching.  In  this 
clearer  light  we  shall  recognise  the  Apocalyptic 
thunderings  and  trumpetings  as  poetic  repre- 
sentations of  a  something  that  in  itself  is 
entirely  spiritual.  The  true  eternity  which 
Christ  taught  has,  it  is  true,  duration  in 
it;  death  also  and  the  Beyond  in  it;  but 
these  are  the  smallest  part  of  the  idea. 

19 


290        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEBSE. 

For,  essentially,  His  eternity  is  not  only  then, 
but  now ;  not  only  there,  beyond  the  stars,  but 
here,  in  the  conscious  soul.  The  eternal  life 
He  offers  is  not  a  mere  uncountable  sum  of 
years.  Its  chief  element  is  a  conscious  relation 
to,  reception  of,  and  fellowship  with,  that  im- 
mutable spiritual  Order  which  exists  behind  the 
veil.  It  is  the  sharing  of  that  Divine  reality  of 
which  the  soul's  most  ardent  aspirations  are  the 
faint  adumbration;  to  taste  of  which  is  to 
know  at  once  life's  meaning,  and  its  inmost 
satisfaction.  To  the  man  who  inhabits  this 
region,  time  and  eternity  are  not  two  things, 
they  are  one.  He  sees  the  visible  in  the  light 
of  the  invisible,  sub  specie  ceternitatis.  The 
world  is  to  him  like  one  of  those  dissolving 
views,  in  which  the  scene  we  watch  is  already 
transfused  by  the  gleam  of  the  one  that  is 
behind. 

It  is  eternity  under  this  aspect  that  gives 
morality  its  one  vital  and  efficacious  motive, 
and  to  human  life  its  true  value  and  perspective. 
It  is  a  view  which  inspires  the  whole  man. 
Citizenship,  science,  art,  politics,  social  law, 
become  ennobled  as  part  of  a  world-order  which 
rests  on  an  immutable  spiritual  scheme.  The 
truth  of  all  this  carries  its  evidence  in  the  fact 


MORALS  AND  ETERNITY.  291 

that  our  fellow  becomes  only  entirely  human  to 
us,  truly  dear  and  valuable,  as  we  discern  in 
him  something  of  this  eternity.  The  man  who 
gives  clearest  proof  to  his  brethren  that  his 
habitual  dwelling  is  in  that  region,  who  can 
bring  to  them  largest  spoil  of  this  sacred 
Invisible,  will  be  always  recognised  by  them  in 
the  end  as  of  all  benefactors  the  highest. 


XXXII. 
The   Christ  of  To-Day. 

THE  title,  without  explanation,  might  seem 
almost  an  impertinence.  Is  the  Christ  of 
to-day,  then,  different  from  the  Christ  of 
yesterday  or  of  to-morrow?  Is  not  the 
doctrine  of  His  unchangeableness  the  centre 
of  Christian  orthodoxy  ?  That  may  be,  and  yet 
our  title  holds.  For  it  is  an  expression  simply 
of  the  relativity  of  our  knowledge.  In  a  sense 
Christ  is  the  creation  of  each  fresh  generation, 
because  each  generation  creates  the  world 
it  lives  in.  The  universe  is  to  a  worm 
what  the  worm  can  make  of  it.  We  cannot 
get  an  absolute  knowing,  because  we  cannot 
cut  ourselves  loose  from  the  variableness  of  our 
knowing  faculty.  The  universe  grows  with 
our  growth.  It  is  bigger  with  every  addition 
to  our  own  mental  height.  And  this  law  of 
relativity  holds  equally  in  our  religious 
knowledge.  The  difference  between  the  per- 
ception of  Christ  which  recognised  Him  simply 


THE  CHRIST  OF  TO-DAY.  293 

as  "  the  carpenter's  son,"  and  the  perception 
of  the  writer  of  the  fourth  gospel  marked,  let 
us  remember,  no  difference  in  the  object,  but 
only  a  difference  in  the  perceivers.  And  the 
point  of  view  which  gives  us  our  vision  is  one 
which,  apart  from  our  will  and  apart  from  our 
moral  condition,  is  perpetually  changing.  The 
twentieth  century  cannot  see  the  Christ,  if  it 
would,  with  the  eye  of  the  middle  ages.  It 
sees  with  its  own,  and  the  later  view  will  carry 
in  it  something  different  from  the  earlier.  We 
may  not  quarrel  with  this  fact,  far  less  reproach 
ourselves  because  it  is  so.  It  lies  in  the  nature 
of  things.  It  is  God's  way  with  us. 

What  we  want,  then,  is  to  discover  the 
content  of  the  consciousness  of  to-day  con- 
cerning Christ  and  to  reach  some  conclusions 
about  it.  And  the  first  point  we  note  is  that 
our  age  brings  to  this  study  some  fresh 
measuring  instruments.  By  its  new  scientific 
process,  and  especially  by  its  all-comprehending 
formula  of  evolution,  it  proposes  to  reinterpret 
all  the  phenomena  of  life,  and  amongst  them  all 
the  Christian  phenomena.  The  historical  facts 
are  studied  in  the  light  of  a  new  science  of 
history,  including  a  science  of  the  growth  of 
legends  and  myths.  The  New  Testament 


294        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEBSE. 

literature  lias  in  our  time  been  put  under  the 
microscope  and  every  line  of  it  critically 
examined.  All  the  facts,  all  the  historical 
material  of  that  first  century,  all  its  mental 
and  moral  conditions,  all  the  sources  from 
which  light,  from  however  distant  a  point, 
could  be  thrown  upon  the  central  story  of  the 
Christian  origins,  have  been  investigated  with 
a  patience  and  an  accuracy  to  which  no  earlier 
time  offers  a  parallel.  A  great  theological 
school,  the  Bitschlian,  to  which  modern  Chris- 
tian thought  is,  in  many  ways,  so  much 
indebted,  declares  that  only  along  this  line  of 
historical  investigation  is  the  truth  to  be 
reached,  and  discards  accordingly  what  it  calls 
the  metaphysics  of  religion.  In  other  direc- 
tions there  is  exhibited  a  similar  tendency  to 
strip  off  from  Christianity  its  element  of 
mystery.  The  emphasis  is  put  on  the  moral 
teachings  of  Christ.  The  splendid  analysis  of 
these  teachings  by  a  Wendt  and  a  Bernard 
Weiss  has  given  the  world  a  new  sense  of  the 
supreme  equality  of  the  Gospel  ethic.  A 
Tolstoi,  cutting  himself  loose  from  the  conven- 
tional orthodoxy  of  the  Church,  finds  in  these 
teachings  alone  what  he  considers  a  complete 
theory  of  living. 


THE  CHRIST  OF  TO-!)AY.  295 

The  historians  and  the  critics  have,  indeed, 
laboured  hard  to  give  us  the  real  Christ,  and, 
especially  in  their  work  upon  the  teaching,  it 
must  be  said  not  without  fruit.  And  yet  when 
we  examine  the  Christian  consciousness  of 
to-day,  where,  at  least,  it  is  to  any  adequate 
degree  developed,  we  are  struck  to  find  to  how 
small  an  extent  the  external,  visible  history  of 
Christ  enters  into  the  totality  of  its  possession 
in  Him.  The  history  makes  Him  tangible  to 
us  as  a  human  personality,  fixes  Him  firmly 
upon  the  ground,  gives  Him  a  date  in  time  and 
a  place  in  nationality.  He  is  there  as  visible 
and  actual  as  Tiberius  or  as  Tacitus.  And  yet, 
compared  with  what  He  stands  for  in  the 
inner  life,  this  purely  personal  story  is  as  a 
cloud  that  forms  upon  a  corner  of  the  sky 
compared  with  the  infinite  blue  beyond. 

If  one  might  speak  of  final  causes  in  this 
connection,  it  could  be  said  that  from  the 
beginning  it  seemed  fore-ordained  that  Christ's 
external  history  should  play  only  a  subordinate 
part  in  His  total  representation.  We  seem 
ever  unable  to  reach  Him  that  way.  A  man 
travels  over  Palestine,  studies  the  topography 
of  Jerusalem  and  Nazareth,  and  feels  as  he 
conies  away  that  he  is  not  nearer  but  infinitely 


296  OURSELVES    AND    THE   UNIVERSE. 

further  from  his  quest.  The  world  contains 
no  monument  of  Christ,  no  authentic  picture. 
The  early  fathers  who  venture  descriptions  of 
His  personal  appearance  fall  into  hopeless 
contradiction.  Apart  from  the  doubtful  cor- 
respondence with  the  King  of  Edessa,  we  have 
not  a  line  from  His  hand.  We  know  Shake- 
speare by  Hamlet  and  Goethe  by  Faust,  but 
Christ  published  no  book.  Even  that  part  of 
His  career  of  which  alone  we  have  any  written 
details,  the  period  of  from  one  to  three  years 
of  His  public  service,  we  do  not  know  how 
coherently  to  piece  together.  All  we  can  say 
is,  there  is  a  personal  history,  but  as  compared 
with  the  totality  of  our  Christ  of  to-day  it  is  a 
fragment,  a  suggestion. 

Who  and  what,  then,  is  the  Christ  of  to-day? 
First  of  all,  He  is  the  Power  behind  the  New 
Testament.  Not,  to  the  modern  mind,  so  much 
visibly  in  it  as  behind  it.  Just  as  science  finds 
in  all  phenomena  the  manifestation  of  an  un- 
seen, ever-present  Force,  so  the  investigator 
to-day,  turning  over  the  Christian  records,  feels 
himself  at  every  point  in  contact  with  the 
mystery  that  made  them  possible.  Here,  to 
the  scientific  mind,  is  the  real  question.  For 
to  whatever  extent  the  inaccurate  or  the 


THE  CHRIST   OF  TO-DAY.  297 

legendary  inay  have  crept  in  to  the  New 
Testament,  there  is  one  thing  in  which  its 
absolute  reliability  can  never  be  questioned. 
It  represents,  with  the  accuracy  of  a  hair 
balance,  the  impression  made  upon  its  writers 
by  Christ's  personality.  The  fourth  gospel  is 
the  echo  from  the  soul  of  its  writer  of  the 
heavenly  voice  that  had  spoken  to  it.  The 
Pauline  Epistles  show  us  what  one  of  the 
deepest  minds  the  world  ever  produced  felt 
about  Jesus.  The  different  reports  of  these 
manifold  collaborateurs  vary  with  all  manner 
of  individual  idiosyncrasy  and  standpoint.  But 
not  one  of  them  fails  to  make  us  understand 
that  the  One  whom  he  wrote  about  had  made 
on  the  writer  the  impression  of  something 
heavenly,  mighty,  beautiful  beyond  all  that 
was  human,  of  One  who  had  opened  new 
powers  in,  and  disclosed  new  horizons  to,  his 
own  soul.  But,  by  the  law  of  dynamics,  a 
given  impression  requires  an  adequate  cause. 
If  this  was  the  impression,  what  of  the  cause  ? 
Thus  is  Christ  to  us  of  to-day  for  one  thing, 
the  Power,  the  radiant  mystery  behind  the 
New  Testament. 

But  the  Christ  of  to-day  is  something  more, 
in  a  sense  we  may  say,  something  much  greater 


298         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

even,  than  the  Christ  of  the  New  Testament. 
There  we  behold  Him  in  the  restrictions  of 
bodily  life.  But  now  we  see  Him,  as  a  sheer 
spiritual  Power,  traversing  and  transforming 
the  ages.  Psychological  facts  are  just  as  real 
as  any  other — more  so,  indeed,  for  they  are  the 
only  ones  we  really  know.  And  the  candid 
inquirer  upon  our  theme  has  now  to  investigate 
the  meaning  of  that  Christ  of  the  inner  man  of 
whom  the  subsequent  ages  are  full.  We  have 
here  to  step  beyond  the  bounds  of  Judsea  and 
of  Galilee,  beyond  the  bounds  of  A.D.  30,  and 
to  discover  the  significance  of  the  Christ  in  St. 
Paul,  in  Augustine,  in  Bernard,  in  Wesley. 
We  have  to  compute  here  the  whole  content 
and  quality  of  that  stream  of  spiritual  life 
which  from  the  first  century  has  been  flowing 
in  upon  human  souls  and  producing  such  won- 
drous experiences.  What  is  the  force  that,  in 
an  Ignatius,  condemned  to  a  torturing  death, 
impels  him  rapturously  to  welcome  fire,  cross, 
and  wild  beast  if  only  he  may  "  attain  unto 
Jesus  Christ "  ?  That  is  one  of  a  million  of 
the  inner  testimonies.  But  they  are  all  to  the 
same  effect.  It  is  the  simple  fact  to  say  that 
to  all  ages  and  conditions  Christ  has  been  the 
life  of  the  soul.  In  this  view  the  Christ  of 


THE  CHRIST  OF  TO-DAY.  299 

to-day  is  an  invisible  world  power,  whose 
operations  are  in  the  interior  of  human  hearts. 
And  the  force  seems  as  continuous,  as  persist- 
ent, and  as  penetrating  as  that  of  gravitation. 

If  the  facts  are  thus,  or  anything  like  this, 
what  is  the  explanation?  There  is  an  early 
one  that,  so  far  as  we  know,  has  never  yet  been 
bettered,  and  the  full  significance  of  which  we 
have  perhaps  scarcely  yet  fully  grasped.  It  is 
that  given  us  in  the  history  of  St.  Paul.  Xo 
human  being  probably  has  ever  been  more 
profoundly  under  the  power  of  Christ,  and  yet 
he  had  never  seen  Christ  in  the  flesh,  and  he 
scarcely  ever  refers  to  the  facts  of  His  earthly 
career.  Yet  he  was  persuaded  of  Christ  as  yet 
living  and  as  the  very  centre  of  man's  unseen 
world.  His  own  inward  life  and  the  resulting 
external  career  were  made,  he  unceasingly 
declared,  by  His  touch  from  the  invisible. 
Paul's  assurance  here  is  the  more  remarkable 
as  he  has  nothing  to  say  of  the  birth  stories 
and  nothing  about  what  Harnack  calls  the 
Easter  stories.  What  he  knew  was  his  own 
soul  and  the  power  on  it  of  this  unseen 
Christ. 

What  we  have  reached,  then,  as  our  Christ 
of  to-day  is,  a  human  history,  a  personality 


300        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

and  a  power  behind.  A  cloud  in  the  heavens, 
shall  we  say,  and  the  infinite  blue  beyond, 
from  out  of  which  the  cloud  has  drawn  itself  ? 
And  the  cloud  and  the  blue  are  one.  "The 
mystery  is  beyond  words,  and  yet  this  is  finally 
how  it  shapes  itself :  The  Infinite  to  be  the 
Infinite  must  contain  the  element  of  person- 
ality. It  contains  more  than  force  ;  it 
contains,  also,  truth,  love,  purity,  holiness. 
But  these  to  have  their  true  effect  in  the 
human  sphere  must  personalise.  The  Infinite 
here  must  take  shape.  The  limitless  blue  must 
yield  its  cloud.  And  it  has  done  so.  TV  hen  in 
the  secret  place  of  our  soul  we  build  our  God, 
we  form  Him  not  out  of  cosmic  forces,  not  out 
of  gravitation  and  chemical  attraction,  but  out 
of  holiness  and  love.  And,  lo  !  as  we  look,  the 
form  is  as  of  the  Son  of  Man  !  The  Absolute 
as  Absolute  is  not  enough  for  the  religious  life. 
Man  must  have  some  fixed,  visible  point,  some 
crystallisation,  as  it  were,  of  the  All  on  which 
his  love  and  reverence  may  rest.  That  is 
where  the  New  Testament  story  meets  him. 
Here  he  finds  the  humanising  and  person- 
alising of  the  Infinite  Goodness.  In  the  study 
of  this  Life  he  tastes  eternity.  And  as  he 
believes,  the  power  to  be  good  flows  into  him. 


THE   CHRIST  OF  TO-DAY.  SOI 

Therefore  knows  lie  to-day  the  Christ,  not 
only  as  human,  but  also  as  Divine;  not  only 
as  a  figure  in  history,  but  as  the  eternal 
Now. 

God  may  have  other  Words  for  other  worlds, 
But  for  this  world  the  Word  of  God  is  Christ. 


XXXIII. 
The   World's    Surprises. 

MAX  MULLER  says  of  the  early  Aryans  that 
they  seem  never  to  have  got  over  their  first 
surprise  at  the  world,  their  sense  of  its  utter 
strangeness,  and  of  themselves  as  strangers  in 
it.  It  is  a  refreshing  utterance.  We  have  not 
sufficiently  appraised  our  sense  of  wonder  as 
a  spiritual  asset.  In  fact,  not  to  wonder  has 
been  in  more  than  one  age  lauded  as  a  virtue. 
We  remember  how  Aristotle,  in  the  "  Ethics," 
speaking  of  his  "  Magnanimous  Man,"  says 
that  "  he  is  not  apt  to  admire,  for  nothing  is 
great  to  him."  And  the  tendency  of  modern 
research  seems,  at  first  sight,  all  in  favour  of 
nil  admirari.  Science  has  swept  the  universe 
clean  of  the  old  elements  on  which  wonder  fed. 
The  gods  and  goddesses  have  ceased  from 
Olympus  ;  dryads  and  genii  no  longer  haunt 
the  woods  and  streams.  The  world's  poetry 
seems  in  danger  of  extinction  under  the  empire 
of  universal  law.  Where  is  romance  when 


THE  WORLD'S  SURPRISES.  803 

everything  has  been  explained?  Long  ago 
Keats  protested  at  science's  dry-as-dust  pro- 
gramme : 

Do  not  all  charms  fly 
At  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy  P 
There  was  an  awful  rainbow  once  in  heaven  : 
We  know  her  woof,  her  texture  :  she  is  given 
In  the  dull  catalogue  of  common  things. 

But  our  poets  need  not  be  afraid.  It  is  not 
in  the  power  of  science  to  extinguish  the  soul's 
wonder  at  itself  and  the  world.  Busied  for 
awhile  with  the  new  explanations,  it  discovers 
in  the  end  that  the  problem  has  been  thrown 
only  one  step  further  back.  The  primal 
mystery  looms  out  behind  more  unfathom- 
able than  ever.  There  are  people  who  talk 
about  the  improbability,  almost  the  incon- 
ceivability, of  a  future  state  of  existence.  Has 
it  ever  occurred  to  them  to  speculate  on  the 
antecedent  improbability,  inconceivability  even, 
of  such  a  state  as  the  one  we  actually  find 
ourselves  in  ?  After  it  has  been  made  certain 
to  us  that  such  impossible  beings  as  we  are 
actually  inhabiting  so  impossible  a  world,  the 
a  priori  objections  against  another  life  for  us 
in  another  world  become  in  comparison 
ridiculously  small.  It  is  worth  while  to  catch 


304  OUESELVES   AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

this  view  sometimes  in  its  full  force.  We  get 
it  now  and  then  when3  in  waking  slowly  from 
a  dream  state,  after  lying  for  a  while  in  semi- 
consciousness,  the  reality  gradually  dawns  upon 
us.  "  Is  it  actually  true,  then,"  we  say,  "  that  I 
am  what  I  am,  and  where  I  am,  and  that 
things  around  me  are  as  they  are?"  We 
taste  to  the  full  in  that  moment  the  world's 
strangeness.  To  have  waked  up  in  another 
sphere  had  been  hardly  less  startling  than  to 
have  waked  up  in  this. 

No  scientific  explanations,  no  cosmic 
theories,  can  take  away  the  essential  marvel  of 
things  as  they  are.  When  we  explain  the 
motion  of  suns  and  planets  by  a  law  of 
gravitation,  which  acts,  we  say,  "as  the 
square  of  the  distance,"  we  simply  run  up 
against  another  question  that  we  are  powerless 
to  resolve  :  Why  should  there  be  a  law  of 
gravitation?  and  why  should  it  act  as  the 
square  rather  than,  say,  as  the  cube  of  the 
distance?  When  we  account  for  the  world 
by  tracing  all  back  to  an  original  revolving 
fire  mist,  condensing  into  planets  and  evolving 
in  succession  atmosphere,  rocks,  soil,  water, 
plants,  animals,  and  finally  man,  "why,"  we 
must  ask,  "did  the  original  motion  work  along 


THE  WORLD'S  SURPRISES.  805 

these,  out  of  all  possible,  lines,  and  what 
was  there  in  the  first  impulsion  that  could 
produce  such  effects  ? "  How,  along  this 
line  of  thinking,  did  the  original  blind  force 
contrive  to  endow  us,  at  this  far  end,  with 
souls,  and  sympathy  and  religion  ?  To  reach 
this  actual,  what  inconceivable  hosts  of  im- 
probabilities have  been  trampled  over  !  The 
miracle  of  man,  as  conceived  by  the  Hebrew 
cosmogonists,  is  nothing  as  compared  with 
the  miracle  of  man  as  conceived  by  the 
scientists. 

To  thoughtful  minds  the  world's  greatest 
surprise  lies  in  its  two-sidedness.  To  gaze  in 
one  direction  gives  us  a  fit  of  pessimism.  We 
cannot  look  five  minutes  in  another  direction 
without  being  swept  on  the  tide  of  a  glorious 
optimism.  It  is  this  mixture  of  the  divine  and 
the  sordid  that  makes  the  riddle.  On  the  one 
side  we  have  a  sense  of  the  splendour  of  life 
which  makes  even  such  a  scoffer  as  Nietzsche 
break  into  rapture :  "  And  truly,"  says  he, 
"  divine  spectators  are  necessary  in  order  to 
appreciate  the  spectacle  which  is  here  inaugur- 
ated, and  of  which  the  outcome  can  not  as  yet 
be  imagined,  a  spectacle  too  fine,  too  wonder- 
ful, too  paradoxical  for  its  possibly  being  a 

20 


306        OURSELVES  AND  THE 


mere  meaningless  side-show  upon  some  ridicu- 
lous star."  But  then  that  other  side,  the  side 
of  darkness,  failure,  pain  and  evil  !  How  it 
has  racked  the  human  brain  to  find  here  some- 
thing that  is  intelligible  !  We  turn  the  pages 
of  Plato,  with  his  idea  that  the  Creator,  having 
to  mix  together  necessity  and  thought,  made 
the  Universe  as  like  to  Himself  as  He  could  ; 
of  Aristotle,  with  his  distinction  between  the 
inner  form  of  the  Universe  and  the  outer 
matter,  identifying  the  Divine  perfection  with 
the  form  and  the  imperfection  with  the  matter; 
of  a  Leibnitz  holding  this  to  be  the  best  world 
possible,  the  best  solution  of  the  problem  in 
maxima  and  minima,  of  the  union  of  the 
infinite  with  the  finite.  Every  age  has,  in 
fact,  had  its  solution,  and  ended  by  leaving  the 
matter  very  much  where  it  was.  But  it  is  this 
darkest  side  which  leaves  us  most  certain  that 
we  form  part  in  no  commonplace  scheme,  and 
that  a  world  which  offers  us  such  surprises  to- 
day has  yet  greater  ones  in  store. 

This  conclusion,  which  the  general  outlook 
suggests,  is  greatly  strengthened  when  we 
come  to  the  study  of  history.  A  modern  view 
has  disparaged  history  as  "dealing,  not  like 
philosophy  and  science,  with  ideas  and  concep- 


THE  WORLD'S  SURPRISES.  307 

tions,  but  only  with  endless  particulars,  with 
things  that  happened  once  and  then  ceased  to 
exist."  This  conception  by  Schopenhauer  of 
history,  as  a  jumble  without  laws  underneath 
it  or  purposes  running  through  it,  is  matched 
in  fatuity  by  that  of  another  non-Christian 
thinker,  Buckle,  who,  going  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  makes  all  history  an  affair  of  natural 
law,  and  reduces  the  difference  between  men 
and  races  into  an  affair  simply  of  climate,  soil 
and  food.  One  might  ask  here  why  on  this 
hypothesis  a  Germany,  having  the  same 
climate,  soil  and  food  as  Luther  knew,  does  not 
continuously  produce  Luthers  ?  Neither  of 
these  teachers  offers  a  satisfying  answer  to  the 
problem  of  history.  As  against  Schopenhauer, 
we  see  in  its  events  and  persons  the  sequences 
of  an  ordered  movement;  we  see  its  back- 
ground crammed  with  purpose.  As  against 
Buckle,  we  discover  it  to  be  full  of  the  unex- 
pected, of  the  incalculable.  It  is  because  the 
universe  exists  not  for  the  sake  of  laws,  but  of 
persons ;  because  its,  to  us,  invisible  spheres 
are  full  of  them,  that  we  may  expect  continu- 
ally vast  births  of  time,  the  appearance  of 
great  natures,  whose  solitary  thought  and  voli- 
tion change  the  destinies  of  generations. 


308        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Unpredictable  indeed  and  unimaginable  are 
the    turning-points    of    history.      Imagine    a 
Buckle  in  the  year  1  A.D.  studying  Palestinian 
Judaism,  and  from  what  was  there  to  see  in  the 
present,  and  from  a  past  that  for  long  centuries 
had  been    so    arid,    foretelling    its    probable 
future  !     What  was  there  in  the  circumstances, 
and  the   outlook,  to  make  possible  the  New 
Testament  and  the   history  of   Christendom? 
And  yet  all  this  came.     "  Unto  us  a  Child  is 
born,"  and  the  key  is  turned  in  the  door  of 
destiny.     On  a  minor  scale  the  same  thing  is 
continually   happening.     At  the  end    of    the 
eighteenth    century    poetry    seemed    dead    in 
England.     Who  remembers  the  names  of  the 
laureates  of  that  time  ?    Decades  of  barrenness 
succeeded  each  other,  and  then  suddenly  arose 
a  whole  galaxy,  and  the  firmament  shone  with 
a  Wordsworth,  a  Coleridge,  a  Byron,  a  Shelley, 
a  Keats.     To-day  the  literary  drought  is  sore, 
but  a  new  Shakespeare  may  be  in  the  cradle. 
The  world  indeed,  both  of  thought  and  action, 
is  prepared  for  immense  surprises  in  the  imme- 
diate future.     Those  of  us  who  are  middle-aged 
have   seen   within   our   lifetime   a   change  in 
ideas  in  the  mode  of  conceiving  the  Universe, 
greater  than  any  that  has  taken  place  before 


THE  WORLD'S  SURPRISES.  309 

through  thousands  of  years.  And  the  rate  of 
movement  now  promises  to  be  cumulative. 
We  may  be  on  the  eve  of  discoveries,  or 
coming  within  the  sweep  of  influences,  that 
will  alter  the  whole  face  of  humanity. 

But  the  theme,  treated  thus  far  on  general 
lines,  has  some  personal  applications.  At  the 
beginning  we  spoke  of  wonder  as  a  spiritual 
asset,  and  we  can  now  return  to  that.  Men 
think  a  good  deal  to-day  of  their  surprise 
faculty,  and  pay  large  sums  to  feed  it  withal. 
The  Roman  Emperor  who  offered  a  fortune  to 
the  man  who  could  procure  him  a  new  sensa- 
tion would  find  sympathisers  to-day.  People 
travel  round  the  globe  in  search  of  its  big 
things,  the  views  that  will  startle  and  astonish. 
But  this  is,  after  all,  a  worn-out  way  of  seeking 
the  wonderful.  The  true  way  of  travel  here 
is  not  the  lateral,  but  the  vertical.  The  secret 
is  not  BO  much  that  of  roaming  as  of  mount- 
ing. A  man  who  has  seen  the  prospect,  every 
day  of  his  life,  from  his  native  village  would 
scarce  know  it  as  viewed  from  a  balloon.  If  as 
individuals  we  would  seek  the  world's  surprises 
it  must  be  by  the  inner  way.  When  we  change 
a  habit,  when  we  start  a  fresh  study,  when  we 
take  on  a  new  service,  when  we  open  a 


310        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

hitherto  untouched  side  of  our  nature  to  the 
free  play  of  God's  Spirit,  we  shall  find  our- 
selves in  a  new  world.  Life,  as  Madame 
Swetchine  says,  consists  mainly  of  what  we  put 
into  it.  Natures  that  by  constant  endeavour 
and  aspiration  preserve  their  freshness,  find  an 
intoxication  in  every  fresh  dawn.  To  them, 
happy  souls,  is  it  given — 

To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  of  sand, 
And  a  heaven  in  a  wild  flower ; 

Hold  infinity  in  the  palm  of  the  hand, 
And  eternity  in  an  hour. 

They  have  learned  Emerson's  lesson,  that  every 
day  is  the  best  day  in  the  year. 

That,  too,  is  a  poor  life  which,  in  the  retro- 
spect, does  not  abound  in  reverent  wonder  at 
the  Divine  goodness  in  the  whole  ordering  of 
it.  It  is  a  fine  observation  of  Ritschl  that  each 
man's  belief  in  a  personal  Providence  arises 
out  of  his  own  experience  of  God's  leading. 
Stevenson  found  it  hard  to  forgive  God  for  the 
sufferings  of  others,  but  melted  at  the  thought 
of  His  fatherly  dealing  with  himself.  And  yet 
what  a  sufferer  was  he  !  It  is  the  marvellous 
history  of  that  hidden  Love  toward  us  in  the 
past  that  heartens  us  for  the  future.  When 
we  steer  towards  some  menacing  fate  that 


THE  WORLD'S  SURPRISES.  311 

fronts  us  we  may  meet  it  without  fear.     Its 
utmost  shock  will  be  a  surprise  of  grace. 

That  is  what  will  happen  to  us  in  death. 
Dying  will  not  hurt  us.  Sir  James  Paget  said 
that  he  had  scarce  known  a  patient  who,  when 
the  end  came,  regarded  it  with  fear,  or  with 
aversion.  He  believed,  indeed,  that  it  had  its 
own  pleasure,  as  has  every  other  physical  func- 
tion. It  was  said  of  Bushnell  that,  "  Even  his 
dying  was  play  to  him."  And  why  not  ?  We 
agree  with  Erasmus  that  "no  man  can  die 
badly  who  has  lived  well."  And  all  that  we 
have  experienced  in  this  world,  the  wonder  of 
it,  its  deliverances,  its  trainings,  its  thousand 
gracious  interpositions,  lead  us  in  our  turn  to 
the  saint's  trust  of  every  age,  that  our  passing 
hence  will  be  to  encounter  the  grandest  and 
most  blessed  surprise  of  all. 


XXXIV. 
Life's    Exchange    System. 

THE  world  has  abundance  of  written  creeds, 
but  it  is  the  unwritten  ones  that  really  count. 
Each  man  carries  his  own.  After  a  certain 
number  of  years  on  this  planet  we  most  of  us 
gain  a  conception  of  life  which  becomes  hence- 
forth our  working  belief.  Part  of  it  inherited, 
and  part  of  it  home  made,  the  whole  gets 
shape  and  colour  from  our  special  experience. 
This  private  creed  of  the  modern  man  differs 
often  from  the  Catechism  as  much  in  what  it 
contains  as  in  what  it  leaves  out.  It  is 
strange  that  theology  should  have  failed  so 
signally  in  furnishing  the  really  vital  formulas. 
The  man  in  the  street  if  asked  for  his  idea 
of  life,  instead  of  quoting  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  is  more  likely  to  turn  to  the  utterance 
of  some  rank  outsider.  How  immense,  for 
instance,  the  vogue  of  Huxley's  famous  simile 
of  a  game  of  chess,  where  man  is  pitted 
against  an  unseen  player,  inexorably  just, 


LIFE'S  EXCHANGE  SYSTEM.  313 

demanding  strict  adherence  to  the  rules,  allow- 
ing no  move  back,  awarding  full  recognition  to 
skill  and  care,  but  meeting  ignorance  and 
negligence  with  certain  overthrow ! 

And  jet  the  illustration  was  a  poor  one.  It 
is  not  true.  At  least  not  true  enough,  not 
la  Verite  vraie.  In  chess  the  win  of  the  one 
party  is  the  loss  of  the  other,  unless  the  game 
is  drawn,  when  neither  has  any  advantage. 
We  refuse  to  accept  any  such  result  as  the 
summing-up  of  life.  Far  nearer  to  the  fact, 
surely,  is  the  conception  of  it  as  a  commerce, 
a  system  of  exchanges.  In  a  true  commerce 
both  sides  win.  Bu}rer  and  seller,  the  one  who 
delivers  and  the  one  who  receives,  are  alike 
benefited,  and  the  series  of  transactions  works 
for  the  individual  and  the  general  enrichment. 
The  facts  are  certainly  more  solidly  behind  this 
view  than  that  of  the  chess  game.  There  are 
enough  of  them  to  permit  us  to  say  that,  in 
the  long  process  of  the  years,  life's  exchange 
system  has  wrought,  not  for  a  win  at  the  price 
of  an  equivalent  loss,  but  for  a  steady  gain  all 
round. 

But  we  are  anticipating.  Our  formula  has 
not  yet  justified  itself.  Is  it  allowable  to 
speak  of  the  universe  as  summed  up  in  an 


314        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

exchange  system  ?  It  would  be  presumption, 
indeed,  to  use  the  phrase  as  a  complete 
explanation  of  the  Whole  to  which  we  belong. 
But  it  may  fairly  be  said  to  contain  a  great 
deal  of  it.  For  one  thing,  inanimate  nature  is, 
as  we  see,  a  perpetual  commerce.  Everything 
changes  into  everything  else.  Force  is 
Protean.  The  same  energy  becomes  in  turn 
heat,  light,  electricity,  motion.  The  chemical 
elements  rush  into  continual  new  combina- 
tions. There  is  no  such  thing  in  this  sphere 
as  the  solid  and  the  immutable.  The  "  ever- 
lasting hills "  are  none  of  them  everlasting. 
The  Matterhorn,  as  Tyndall  said,  is  in  ruins. 
Snowdon  was  once  probably  twenty  thousand 
feet  high.  Its  debris  is  scattered  to-day  over  a 
dozen  counties.  The  history  of  a  planet  is  of 
an  unceasing  transformation,  from  moment  to 
moment,  and  from  seon  to  aeon,  until  the  fire 
niist  from  which  it  sprang  resolves  itself  once 
more  into  the  central  heat. 

It  is,  however,  when  we  come  to  the  plane 
of  human  affairs  that  our  formula  reveals  its 
chief  contents.  And  here  it  is  not  so  much 
the  mere  process  of  change,  though  that  bulks 
largely  enough,  as  the  give  and  take  in  it,  the 
sheer  barter  element,  that  most  strikes  us. 


LIFE'S  EXCHANGE  SYSTEM.  315 

Nature  sits  at  her  seat  of  custom  and  drives 
her  bargains  with  an  unfailing  zest.  Her 
weights  and  scales,  her  currency  and  values 
vary  immensely  as  we  mount  to  life's  higher 
spheres,  taking  on,  as  we  near  the  summits,  a 
fineness,  a  quality  of  the  ethereal,  which  baffle 
our  own  calculations.  But  from  bottom  to  top 
there  seems  ever  the  rule  of  a  quid  pro  quo,  of 
a  something  for  something,  and  never  of  a 
something  for  nothing. 

So  strict  is  her  rule  of  payment  here  that  it 
obtains  rigidly  in  directions  where  Optimism 
would  have  asked  for  relaxation.  She  allows 
no  advance  without  a  seeming  loss.  The  step 
forward  must  pay  toll.  Civilisation  gives  us 
watches  and  roads,  but  robs  us  of  the  savage's 
intuition  of  the  time,  and  his  unerring  trail 
through  the  forest.  We  build  towns  and 
forfeit  the  countryman's  virility.  We  reach 
our  era  of  peace  and  lose  the  heroic  virtues  of 
the  old  war  time.  One  revolts  against  Mark 
Pattison's  dictum  that  "  a  time  of  peace  and 
security  inevitably  tends  to  foster  an  umbratile 
and  academic  science ;  curiosity  is  withdrawn 
from  the  momentous  questions  which  have 
interest  only  for  noble  souls,"  but  one  is  unable 
to  contradict  it.  Men  win  what  seems  mental 


316        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

freedom,  and  often  enough  pay  for  it  in  moral 
energy.  "Only  think,"  says  Vinet,  "of 
France  !  So  much  liberty  and  no  beliefs  !  " 
What  a  price  for  a  supposed  intellectual 
enlargement  that  which  Clough  expresses  in 
his  agnostic  days : 

We  are  most  hopeless  who  had  once  most  hope 
And  most  beliefless  that  had  most  believed ! 

England  could  not  get  her  Reformation  even 
without  paying  over  what  seemed  a  large  part 
of  her  moral  assets.  Froude's  picture  of 
the  position  under  the  Somerset  protecto- 
rate is  terrible,  yet  hardly  exaggerated. 
"Hospitals  were  gone,  schools  broken  up, 
almshouses  swept  away  .  .  .  and  the 
poor,  smarting  with  rage  and  suffering,  and 
seeing  piety,  honesty,  duty  trampled  under 
foot  by  their  superiors,  were  sinking  into 
savages." 

This  particular  ledger  of  nature  offers 
material  that,  it  must  be  confessed,  is 
sufficiently  confusing  to  the  moral  sense.  We 
have  to  leave  it  with  the  feeling  that  our 
knowledge  of  the  accounts  here  is  not  suffi- 
cient to  permit  of  our  striking  a  balance. 
There  are  other  volumes  m  which  we  can  see 


LIFE'S  EXCHANGE  SYSTEM.  317 

our  way  better.  Weighted  with  immeasurable 
significance  are,  for  instance,  the  facts  we 
come  across  relating  to  the  exchanges  between 
man's  visibles  and  invisibles.  The  world's 
history  is  largely  one  of  this  incessantly  trans- 
acted human  barter  of  the  seen  for  the  unseen, 
or  of  the  unseen  for  the  seen.  We  get  glimpses 
also  of  the  results,  though  they  are  but 
glimpses.  From  the  beginning  men  have 
revolted  against  the  system  which  demands 
that  we  should  give  up  one  thing  to  get 
another,  and  have  asked  why  we  cannot  have 
both.  How  true  to  the  heart  of  all  time  is 
this  lament  of  an  old  thirteenth-century 
writer :  "  But  no  advice  was  I  able  to  obtain 
how  one  should  appropriate  to  himself  three 
things  in  order  to  possess  the  fulness  of  his 
powers.  Two  of  these  things  are  honour  and 
wealth.  .  .  .  The  third  is  God's  grace, 
worth  more  than  the  other  two."  He  wants 
all  three,  but  goes  on  to  complain  that  he 
cannot  find  out  how  they  can  be  all  combined 
in  a  single  life. 

Pathetic  bewilderment  of  each  human  soul, 
that  from  the  beginning  it  is  besieged  by  the 
rival  claimants,  with  their  cry  of  "  Choose !  " 
No  line  can  we  conceivably  follow  but  it 


318  OUESELVES  AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

involves  the  giving  up  of  others  that  seem,  as 
we  leave,  them,  so  desirable.  To  energise  is  to 
forfeit;  quietude  ;  in  society  we  lose  contempla- 
tion,; in  the  city's  gaiety  we  have  missed  the 
country's  charm.  At  every  step  we  pay. 
Nothing  is  given ;  all  is  bought.  The  Great 
Temptation  is  strictly  on  these  lines.  "All 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world  will  I  give  thee  if 
.  ."  and  the  price  is  named.  A  man  gains 
a  million  and  finds  himself  inwardly  beggared. 
The  mischief  here  is  that  men  can  reckon  and 
put  into  exact  figures  the  coarse  visibles  that 
entice  them,  while  for  the  final  treasures  they 
give  in  exchange  they  have  no  calculus.  There 
is  no  harm  in  a  man's  desire  to  be  rich  if  only 
he  will  define  properly.  To  be  rich  is  ulti- 
mately a  consciousness.  One  man  is  ten  times 
more  alive  than  another,  at  a  height  ten  times 
the  height  of  another.  That  is  being  rich. 
"  Give  me  health  and  a  day,"  says  Emerson, 
"and  I  will  laugh  to  scorn  the  pomp  of 
emperors."  Pagan  Horace  approaches  the 
truth  in  his 

Cur  yalle  permutem  Sabina 
Divitias  operosiores  ? 

To   exchange  the  quiet  of  his  Sabine  valley, 


LIFE'S  EXCHANGE  SYSTEM.  319 

with  its  life  of  poetic  contemplation,  for  the 
fevered  rush  for  gold  was  to  exact  too  hard  a 
bargain.  How  much  of  life's  highest  range  had 
been  forfeited  to  make  possible  that  inscription 
on  the  monument  of  Sardanapalus :  "  Eat, 
drink  and  (sexually)  love,  for  all  else  is  but 
little  worth !  " 

The  bartering  of  invisible  for  lower  values, 
and  its  inevitable  life  impoverishment,  which 
makes  up  so  much  of  the  human  storj,  serves, 
however,  to  set  off  the  more  vividly  the  peculiar 
and  supernatural  splendour  which  attaches  to 
the  opposite  form  of  commerce.  "  Something 
divine,"  to  use  the  words  of  Aristides,  is  surely 
mingled  with  a  humanity  that  has  made  such 
ventures  of  faith,  such  offerings  of  visibles  for 
invisibles  as  are  on  record.  What  was  the 
inward  reckoning,  what  the  uncountable  coin 
paid  over  to  the  man's  spirit  which  made  a 
Tyndale  satisfied  to  devote  his  splendid  abilities 
to  a  task  which  he  was  beforehand  convinced 
was  to  bring  him,  not  riches  nor  honours,  but 
torture  and  the  stake!  What  motive,  what 
inner  force  is  this  that  sets  a  man  on  a  work  by 
which  we,  without  paying  him  a  penny,  obtain 
our  English  Bible,  while  he  for  reward  gets 
long  lodging  in  that  dismal  Belgian  dungeon 


320        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

where  lie  sits  through  the  cold  winter  nights 
shivering  in  the  dark,  until  its  door  opens  to 
his  executioners !  Who  shall  say  that  a  race 
whose  annals  contain  such  stories  is  born  to 
commonplace  destinies?  The  prophets  and 
martyrs  know  better.  The  path  they  tread, 
and  the  goods  they  offer  and  receive  hint  at 
transactions  of  the  soul,  in  its  commerce  with 
the  Infinite,  which  make  the  bargains  of  Wall 
Street  or  our  Capel  Court  the  mere  huckster- 
ings  of  the  gutter. 

And  this  leads  us  to  a  question  in  which  all 
that  has  gone  before  is  summed  up.  What  is 
the  ultimate  nature  of  life's  exchange  system  ? 
We  have  insisted  that  Nature  keeps  tally  and 
demands  payment  for  everything  she  offers  us. 
But  is  that  the  final  word  on  the  subject  ?  No. 
When  we  get  to  the  matter's  deepest  heart  we 
find  the  word  there  is  not  debt  but  grace. 
Nature's  business  habits,  her  exactions,  her 
demand  always  of  a  something  for  something, 
are  only  a  modus  operandi  which  veils  a  deep 
mystery  of  Good  that  lies  behind.  The  pay- 
ment got  out  of  us  is  really  a  gift  to  us,  and 
one  of  the  most  precious.  Listen  here  to  the 
confession  of  a  modern  spirit,  one  of  our  most 
gifted  and  representative.  Robert  Louis 


LIFE'S  EXCHANGE  SYSTEM.  321 

Stevenson  has  laid  bare  the  innermost  of  the 
thing  in  this  marvellous  utterance  of  his  own 
experience :  "  But  indeed  with  the  passing  of 
the  years,  the  decay  of  strength,  the  loss  of  all 
my  old,  active  and  personal  habits,  there  grows 
more  and  more  upon  me  that  belief  in  the 
kindness  of  the  scheme  of  things,  and  the 
goodness  of  our  veiled  God,  which  is  an  excellent 
and  pacifying  compensation."  Nature's  hard 
bargaining  with  her  suffering  son  had  let  him, 
the  one-time  sceptic,  into  the  secret  of  a 
boundless  Love! 

And  must  we  not  include  death  itself,  that 
ultima  linea  rerum  of  the  ancients,  as  only  a 
part  of  "  Life's  Exchange  System  "  ?  Science 
joins  religion  in  ignoring  the  old  "  ultimate 
boundaries."  Seeming  destructions  are  in  its 
view  only  new  beginnings.  It  was  both  science 
and  Christianity  which  mingled  in  the  senti- 
ment of  Wordsworth  when,  as  Aubrey  de  Vere 
records,  he  "  frequently  spoke  of  death  as  if  it 
were  the  taking  of  a  degree  in  the  university  of 
life."  We  shall  have  come  well  out  of  our  life 
commerce  if,  as  the  account  draws  near  its  close, 
the  give  and  take,  the  gain  and  loss,  have  left 
for  final  result  the  full  assurance  of  this  great 
Christian  hope;  if  we  are  in  the  company  of 

21 


322         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVEESE. 

those  to  whom  apply  the  noble  words  of  our 
Edmund  Waller : 

The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  decayed, 
Lets  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  time  has  made ; 
Stronger  by  weakness,  wiser  men  become 
As  they  draw  near  to  their  eternal  home. 


XXXV. 
The    Spiritual    in    Teaching. 

TEACHING  is  often  thought  of  as  a  class 
function,  but  it  is  vastly  more  than  that. 
When  we  have  reckoned  up  the  twenty 
thousand  odd  Anglican  clergy,  the  yet  greater 
array  of  Nonconforming  ministers,  and  the 
vast  host  of  public  instructors,  who  in  all 
spheres,  from  the  infant  class  to  the  University 
lecture-hall,  are  drilling  the  nation's  youth,  we 
have  only  touched  the  fringe  of  our  national 
army  of  teachers.  Artists,  poets,  statesmen, 
physicians,  are  all  in  it ;  so  is  every  business 
man;  so,  par  excellence,  is  every  father  and 
mother.  The  teaching  comes  by  word  and 
deed,  and  by  things  that  are  beyond  either. 
For,  in  addition  to  what  we  are  specifically 
doing  in  our  trade  or  calling,  we  are  all 
in  our  daily  habits  and  conversation  ex- 
hibiting a  certain  philosophy  of  life,  a  mode 
of  regarding  the  universe  and  the  human 
relation  to  it,  which  makes  us,  whether  we 


324        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

recognise  the  fact  or  not,  the  exponents  of  a 
doctrine. 

Looking  over  the  immense  and  wonderfully 
varied  fields  of  human  activity  we  discern 
in  them  all,  we  say,  a  teaching,  and  the  ques- 
tion now  is  as  to  the  relative  value  of  this 
teaching.  What  we  want  here  to  point  out  is 
that  in  all  these  departments,  however  seem- 
ingly remote  from  one  another,  the  quality  of 
the  work  depends  on  the  presence  or  absence  of 
one  element.  In  painter  or  politician,  in 
architect  or  business  man,  in  parent,  school- 
master or  preacher,  the  note  which  Nature 
demands,  and  which  will  decide  their  real 
worth,  is  the  note  of  the  spiritual. 

By  the  note  of  the  spiritual  we  mean  the 
recognition,  back  of  every  form  of  living  and 
working,  of  an  Unseen  Holy,  of  a  Divine  and 
Infinite  Purity,  Beauty  and  Love,  by  which 
these  several  activities  are  to  be  inspired,  and 
to  which  they  are  always  to  look  for  final 
appraisement.  This  view  of  things  is  one 
against  which,  in  different  quarters,  very 
vigorous  revolts  have  been  made  ;  but  the 
issue  of  those  revolts  confirms  the  fact  that 
the  universe  will  tolerate  no  other.  In  art  we 
have  seen  a  fleshly  school;  in  literature  a 


THE  SPIKITTTAT,  IN  TEACHING.          325 

realism  which  boasts  of  describing  the  naked 
fact  with  no  ideal  behind  it ;  in  public  affairs 
there  have  been  men  who  have  formed  them- 
selves on  Machiavelli.  These  attempts  are 
sometimes  described  as  wicked ;  it  would  be 
much  better  to  call  them  mediocre.  A 
really  great  nature  can  never  endure  itself 
in  such  conditions.  The  proof  is  when  we 
see  such  a  nature  and  study  what  it 
instinctively  seeks  for  and  founds  itself 
upon.  Arnold  was  reverenced  at  Rugby  not 
for  his  specialty  in  teaching  classics  or  his- 
tory, excellent  though  that  was;  his  unique 
hold  on  English  young  manhood  lay  in 
something  outside  text-books.  It  lay  in 
character,  and  the  character,  again,  rested  on 
a  sacred  mystery  behind.  And  there  is  no 
schoolmaster  worth  his  salt  of  whom  a  similar 
thing  may  not  be  said. 

A  great  painter  puts  all  this  on  his  canvas. 
To  gain  mastery  of  form  and  colour  is  only  the 
alphabet  of  his  work.  The  task  which  fires 
his  soul  is  that  of  making  "  the  light  that 
never  was  on  sea  or  shore  "  to  stream  through 
a  landscape  or  to  inspire  a  countenance.  So 
when  men  carve  or  build.  It  is  not  only  in  a 
St.  Mark's  at  Venice,  where  the  whole  New 


326        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Testament  has  been  translated  into  marble, 
that  architecture  represents  the  spiritual  idea. 
There  is  no  structure,  ancient  or  modern,  as 
our  Euskin  has  magnificently  shown,  but 
either  defies  it  or  does  it  homage.  And  if,  in 
public  affairs,  we  note  the  career  of  politicians, 
statesmen,  or  rulers,  it  will  be  found,  without 
exception,  that,  in  the  long  run  the  men  who 
really  impress  their  fellows,  and  whose  work 
endures,  are  citizens  of  the  Unseen.  Whether 
it  is  a  king  like  Alfred,  or  a  revolutionary  like 
Mazzini,  or  a  middle- class  Kadical  like  Bright, 
their  power  lies  here. 

What  we  want  now,  however,  specially  to 
deal  with  is  the  place  of  the  spiritual  in  the 
teaching  more  definitely  recognised  as  religious. 
An  Italian  ex-priest  and  professor,  the  Abb6 
Casamichela,  who  became  a  convert  to  Pro- 
testantism, and  so  knew  both  sides,  said  that 
while  Rome  hid  behind  her  gorgeous  exter- 
nality a  miserable  poverty  of  thought,  Pro- 
testantism made  up  for  its  simplicity  of 
external  worship  by  a  glorious  affluence  of 
ideas.  The  antithesis  is  flattering  to  Pro- 
testantism, but  needs  to  be  taken  with  a  certain 
reserve.  Affluence  of  ideas  is  an  excellent 
thing  in  religion,  but  it  is  not  the  only  nor, 


THE  SPIRITUAL  IN  TEACHING.         327 

indeed,  the  highest  thing.  The  teacher's 
power  here  will  depend  on  something  more 
even  than  his  intellectual  range,  and  that  is 
his  relation  to  the  spiritual  world.  An  Indian 
sage  gives  us  the  whole  secret  in  his  saying 
that  "the  best  preacher  is  the  man  who  has 
attained  a  true  liberation  of  soul."  In  Laur- 
ence Oliphant's  phrase  he  is  one  who  "  has 
lived  the  life." 

It  is  curious,  in  this  connection,  to  see  the 
efforts  men  make  after  originality  in  religious 
teaching.  They  annex  foreign  languages  and 
literatures,  look  up  all  manner  of  obscure 
subjects,  cultivate  at  times  the  wildest  phan- 
tasies in  the  frantic  endeavour  to  find  some- 
thing new.  They  forget  that  the  only  true  and 
healthy  originality  is  that  which  comes  from 
the  constant  growth  of  their  own  soul.  If  we 
want  our  "  old  things  "  to  become  "  new  "  the 
method  is  to  see  them  from  the  variant  stand- 
point of  an  ever-deepening  life.  And  this 
deepening  will  come  by  practice,  by  action, 
more  even  than  by  study.  When  a  man  knows 
a  religious  truth  simply  as  a  doctrine  he  will 
preach  it  in  a  certain  way,  probably  a  very  dry 
way.  When  he  has  ventured  something  on  it ; 
lived  with  it  j  suffered  over  it ;  triumphed  in  it, 


328        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

he  will  preach  it  in  a  very  different  way.  The 
teacher  becomes  inexhaustible  by  putting  him- 
self thus  in  right  relation  in  his  inner  world ; 
by  going  ever  deeper  into  it,  not  speculatively, 
but  actually,  and  offering  always  what  he  finds. 
Such  a  man  discovers  that  the  false  in  teach- 
ing lies  not  so  much  in  its  wrong  relation  to 
outside  fact  as  in  its  wrong  relation  to  his  own 
spirit.  The  heresy  of  heresies  is  to  proclaim 
and  urge  upon  others  what  we  ourselves  have 
not  realised.  On  our  soul's  peril  let  us  not  talk 
of  a  thing  we  have  not  lived.  Bather  let  there 
always  be  more  lived  than  we  can  utter.  Mon- 
taigne has  a  passage  somewhere  in  which  he 
expresses  his  scorn  for  Cicero  and  Pliny  for 
seeking  glory  by  the  mere  style  of  their  writing 
and  speaking.  Caesar  and  Xenophon,  he  says, 
would  never  have  written  of  their  actions  had 
they  not  felt  that  the  actions  in  themselves 
were  greater  than  their  words.  Which  reminds 
us  of  what  Plutarch  so  finely  says  of  Csesar, 
that  "  his  ambition  was  nothing  but  a  jealousy 
of  himself,  a  contest  with  himself,  as  if  it  had 
been  with  some  other  man,  to  make  his  future 
achievements  outshine  the  past."  The  am- 
bition here  was  not  on  the  highest  plane,  but 
the  principle  is  one  for  us  all.  There  is  no 


THE  SPIRITUAL  IN  TEACHING.          329 

way  of  retaining  freshness  as  a  teacher  but  by 
a  life  which,  in  its  ever-increasing  possession 
of  the  spiritual  world,  continually  outshines 
the  past. 

And  it  is  a  deepening  inner  life  that  con- 
stitutes the  best  of  all  securities  for  a  sound 
doctrine.  As  we  become  surer  of  God  and 
more  acclimatised  in  His  truth,  holiness  and 
love,  we  can  look  upon  the  bewilderments  of 
dogmatic  utterance  from  a  very  safe  stand- 
point. Not  that  we  are  going  to  be  infallible. 
We  may  make  abundance  of  mistakes ;  only, 
as  Joubert  says,  "  there  are  some  minds  which 
arrive  at  error  by  all  truths ;  and  others  which 
arrive  at  great  truths  by  all  errors."  The  true 
soul  will  be  wrong  often  enough  in  its  argu- 
ments, but  right  in  its  conclusions.  A  teacher, 
for  instance,  may  state  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Atonement  in  a  way  which,  from  the 
philosophic  or  the  forensic  or  the  scientific 
standpoints,  may  be  riddled  with  objections. 
But  if  he  has  stated  it  so  that  men  have  gone 
away  with  a  new  hatred  of  sin  and  passion  for 
holiness;  with  a  deeper  insight  into  the  love  of 
God,  and  his  law  of  sacrifice  ;  and  with  a  fresh 
great  hope  for  the  utter  redemption  of  this 
sorrowful  world  j  we  say  that  whatever  the 


330         OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

faults  and  ragged  edges  of  his  theory,  as  a 
religious  teacher  he  has  not  gone  far  wrong. 
If  we  are  in  right  relation  with  Eternal  Love, 
Truth  and  Righteousness,  we  shall  steer  our 
way  through  doctrines  without  fear  of  ship- 
wreck. 

Such  teachers  will  find  the  movement  of  the 
modern  world  as  full  of  spiritual  meanings  as 
the  old  allegorists  did  the  stories  of  Job  and  of 
Jacob.  That  line  of  the  German  Claudius 
which  so  shocked  Dr.  Pusey — 

Ea  kam  mir  ein  Gedank  von  ohngefahr 
So  spraoh'  ich  wenn  ich  Christua  war, 

in  this  view  seems  not  at  all  shocking.  They 
realise  that  they  are  interpreting  the  world  of 
to-day  on  the  lines  of  the  Christ-spirit,  and  in 
their  measure,  are  speaking  of  it  as  He  would 
were  He  here. 

To  sum  up.  Our  work  and  life  form  a 
teaching  the  value  of  which  depends  on  our 
relation  to  the  spiritual  world.  Unless  we  and 
our  work  are  rooted  there,  we  and  it  are  as  a 
bubble  that  breaks  on  the  passing  wave.  In 
religion  we  can  teach  nothing  effectively  that 
we  have  not  first  lived.  Our  measure  as 
teachers  will  be  in  the  measure  of  our  experi- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  IN  TEACHING.          331 

ences.  "We  can  give  only  of  what  we  have 
received,  and  we  are  receptive  only  as  we  prac- 
tise inner  obedience.  The  men  who  are  mighty 
in  this  field  are  those  whose  height  of  attain- 
ment gives  a  quality  of  its  own  to  the  words 
they  use,  who  use  speech  as  a  channel  along 
which  flow  influences  that  no  words  can  trans- 
late. 


XXXVI. 
Behind  the  Veil. 

HUMANITY,  says  Comte,  consists  more  of  the 
dead  than  of  the  living.  We  who  are  now 
here  are  the  veriest  fragment  of  those  who 
have  looked  upon  the  sun.  Life  is  a  glimpse 
and  a  vanishing.  The  crowd  that  rolls  in  and 
out  of  London  every  day  is  as  great  this  year 
as  last,  but  its  constituents  have  altered.  Vast 
gaps  would  yawn  in  it  were  it  not  for  fresh 
recruits.  Uno  avulso  non  deficit  alter.  The 
newcomer  fills  the  vacant  place.  But  the 
vanished  ones,  what  of  them  ?  They  were  so 
completely  one  with  us,  so  much  at  home  in 
our  midst.  Their  laughter  is  still  in  our  ears, 
the  light  in  their  eye  haunts  us.  They  were 
more  to  us  than  all  the  world,  and  now  .  .  . ! 
The  journals  are  full  of  news,  but  of  these 
there  is  no  word.  The  earth  is  a  Babel  of 
noises,  but  on  this  one  side  the  silence  is 
absolute.  Our  planet  rolls  in  space  from  end 
to  end  of  its  vast  orbit ;  the  solar  system  itself 


BEHIND  THE  VEIL.  833 

is  sweeping,  with  us  in  it,  toward  an  unknown 
bourne,  but  never  are  we  carried  within  sight 
of  that  undiscovered  country  into  which  our 
beloved  have  passed.  How  well  the  heavens 
keep  their  secret!  No,  it  is  not  the  world's 
uproar  that  plays  havoc  with  our  nerves.  It  is 
its  maddening  silence,  where  we  pant  to  hear  a 
voice. 

There  is  no  subject  on  which  the  teacher  of 
to-day,  who  is  supposed  to  have  any  message 
for  his  fellows,  is  more  eagerly  questioned  than 
this,  of  what,  for  us  and  ours,  lies  behind  the 
veil.  We  all  have  such  heavy  stakes  in  this 
venture.  If  we  have  reached  the  middle  age, 
half  our  friends  are  already  over  the  border, 
and  in  a  few  years  their  lot,  whatever  it  is,  will 
be  ours.  What  is  the  outlook  ?  Is  there  any 
new  light  on  this  theme  ?  In  one  respect  we 
note  a  striking  change  of  position  in  the 
educated  mind  of  to-day.  If  it  has  not  dis- 
covered any  fresh  ground  for  belief,  it  has  very 
clearly  recognised  the  futility  of  what,  not  so 
long  ago,  were  regarded  as  very  excellent 
reasons  for  disbelief.  We  have  in  view  all 
that  has  been  said  on  the  negative  side,  from 
Lucretius  to  Schopenhauer,  and  it  is  surprising 
how  little  it  amounts  to.  The  French  encyclo- 


834       OURSELVES   AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

peedists  imagined  they  had  settled  the  question. 
Their  arguments  to  us  are  simply  amusing-. 
We  turn,  for  instance,  to  Diderot's  Entretien 
d'un  Philosophe,  and  find  our  philosopher  talk- 
ing as  follows :  "  If  you  can  believe  in  sight 
without  eyes,  in  hearing  without  ears,  in  think- 
ing without  a  head,  if  you  could  love  without  a 
heart,  feel  without  senses,  exist  when  you  are 
nowhere  and  be  something  without  extension 
and  place,  then  we  might  indulge  this  hope  of 
a  future  life."  Could  a  more  parochial  view  of 
things  be  imagined  than  this  ?  Spinoza  might 
have  taught  our  Diderot  better.  Anyone  with 
the  smallest  modicum  of  philosophic  imagina- 
tion could  picture  for  himself  beings  in  other 
spheres  to  whom  the  connection  of  thinking 
with  a  brain  would  be  as  impossible  as  that  of 
thinking  without  one  appeared  to  the  encyclo- 
paedist. 

The  whole  negative  argument  from  material- 
ism, is,  in  fact,  out  of  date.  We  are  beginning 
to  realise  that  the  problem  of  a  life  to  come  is 
involved  in  a  new  way  with  the  problem  of  the 
life  that  is.  "  Behind  the  veil "  relates  to 
"  now "  as  much  as  to  "  then."  To  the 
instructed  eye  the  material  world  by  which  we 
are  encompassed  is  itself  a  veil,  from  behind 


BEHIND  THE  VEIL.  335 

which  a  partially  hidden  reality  dimly  shows. 
Plato's  enigmatic  utterance  about  matter,  v\t) 
a\t]6iv6v  i/reuSo?  "  matter  the  true  falsity," 
stands  here  for  us  as  the  shadow  of  a  truth. 
What  we  think  we  know  of  the  visible  world  is 
largely  a  projected  image  of  ourselves.  The 
"  thing  in  itself  "  behind  the  show  our  senses 
create  for  us  is  an  unsolved  riddle.  The  suppo- 
sition that  the  universe  amounts  to  just  what  our 
five  senses  report  would  be  a  philosophy  worthy 
of  Bumbledom.  For  ought  we  know  a  thousand 
new  senses  might  be  created  in  us,  and  each 
find  outside  its  answering  world.  And  the 
senses  we  have  stop  short  on  a  track  they  have 
not  half  traversed.  There  are  colour  and 
sound  vibrations  going  on  perpetually  around 
us  of  which  our  eyes  and  ears  report  nothing. 
What,  on  the  one  side,  lies  beyond  the  millions 
of  stars  revealed  by  our  telescopes,  and,  on  the 
other,  beyond  the  minutest  visible  open  to  our 
microscopes?  We  are  left  without  a  guess. 
All  we  know  is  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a 
system  of  infinite  life  and  potency,  where  every 
advance  of  our  powers  of  perception  reveals 
new  depths  and  possibilities  of  being.  The 
veil  that  hides  things  from  us  is  not  death.  It 
is  our  own  limitations. 


336        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

The  sense  of  the  visible  as  only  the  shadow 
of  a  greater  reality  behind  comes  with  more 
difficulty  to  some  races  than  to  others.  The 
Western  peoples  are  not  specially  gifted  on  this 
side.  Theirs  has  been  largely  a  material 
mission.  To  root  themselves  solidly  on  the 
planet,  to  learn  its  surface  laws,  to  enrich  them- 
selves by  the  clever  manipulation  of  its  forces, 
this  has  been  the  Western  function.  The 
East  gained  an  earlier  sense  of  what  lay 
beneath.  The  world's  great  religions  are 
Oriental.  Egypt  lived  thousands  of  years 
before  Christ  in  the  acutest  perception  of  an 
invisible  world.  In  its  Vedanta  philosophy 
India  also,  in  a  far  antiquity,  beheld  the  world 
as  phenomenal,  resting  on  a  Divine  which  alone 
was  real,  declaring  man's  hold  on  immortality 
to  be  in  the  surrender  of  what  in  him  was 
earthly  and  transitory.  But  no  race  of  man, 
whether  in  East  or  West,  is  permitted  to  escape 
this  discipline.  Sooner  or  later,  after  our  first 
intoxicating  experience  of  the  visible,  does  it 
dawn  upon  us  that  all  this  is  only  a  screen. 
The  very  senses  that  linked  us  at  first  so  firmly 
to  earth  turn  traitor  to  it  later,  and  cry 
"  illusion  I "  The  world  is  in  this  respect  a 
Church,  whose  teaching  and  ritual  none  may 


BEHIND   THE  VEIL.  837 

evade.  As  friend  after  friend  departs,  and  our 
own  years  tell  their  story,  life  becomes  more 
and  more  a  vast  expectation,  a  wait  till  the 
curtain  shall  be  raised.  That  humanity,  spite 
of  itself,  is  drilled  always  into  this  attitude  is, 
for  those  who  see  any  purpose  or  coherence  in 
life,  a  sufficient  hint  of  what  is  yet  to  come. 

While  these  thoughts  have  been  with 
humanity,  as  it  seems,  almost  from  the  be- 
ginning, there  are  considerations  belonging 
specially  to  our  own  time  which  point  all  in  the 
same  direction.  Evolution,  for  instance,  gives 
us  life  as  a  perpetual  ascent.  Each  grade  of 
being  takes  in  all  that  is  beneath  it,  with  some- 
thing of  its  own  added.  Man,  as  we  know 
him,  sums  up  in  himself  the  laws  and  forces  of 
inorganic  matter,  the  vital  principles  of  vege- 
table and  animal  life,  together  with  a  whole 
higher  world  of  his  own.  His  organism,  by  its 
subtle  magic,  transmutes  air  and  water,  vege- 
table and  animal,  into  its  own  superior  form. 
Why  should  not  this  ascent  continue  ?  Why 
should  not  the  inner  economy  of  the  human 
spirit  contain,  in  its  turn,  a  principle  by  virtue 
of  which  the  essentials  of  the  personal  human 
life  shall  be  lifted  to  a  yet  higher  term,  in  a  yet 
higher  sphere  ?  The  argument  gathers  weight 

22 


838       OURSELVES  AND   THE   UNIVERSE. 

in  proportion  to  the  values  which  are  being 
dealt  with.  If  matter,  as  we  now  know,  is 
indestructible,  preserving  its  being  through 
infinite  changes  of  form,  what  is  there  in  the 
nature  of  things  to  forbid  our  belief  that  its 
nobler  partners,  spirit  and  personality,  are  no 
exceptions  to  this  rule  ?  And  when  to  all  this 
we  add  the  considerations  opened  by  the  later 
evolutionary  researches,  showing  as  they  do 
that  the  lower  organisms  are  practically 
immortal ;  that  death  has  come  in  as  part  of 
the  struggle  towards  a  higher  structure — come 
in,  that  is,  not  as  the  lord  and  tyrant  of  life, 
but  as  a  fellow-labourer  working  towards  its 
furtherance — we  realise  how  the  evidence 
accumulates  which  bids  us  look  for  higher 
fruitions,  as  well  as  for  the  solution  of  our 
enigmas,  "  Behind  the  Veil." 

There  is  one  side  of  this  theme  which  we 
hesitate  to  touch.  The  subject  of  spiritual 
communications  from  the  unseen  has  been  too 
often  the  hunting-ground  of  the  religious 
adventurer,  of  those  who  exploit  the  human 
yearning  for  purposes  of  their  own.  The  world 
seems  hardly  yet  sufficiently  trained,  either 
scientifically  or  morally,  for  a  safe  exploration 
of  this  enchanted  land.  Yet  things  from  this 


BEHIND  THE  VEIL.  889 

side  have  swum  into  human  ken  which  refuse 
to  be  ignored.  More  and  more  are  they  arrest- 
ing the  attention  of  the  leading  minds.  It  was 
Kant  who  said  of  ghostly  appearances :  "  For 
my  part,  ignorant  as  I  am  of  the  way  in  which 
the  human  spirit  enters  the  world  and  the  ways 
in  which  it  goes  out  of  it,  I  dare  not  deny  the 
truth  of  many  of  such  narratives."  The  late 
Professor  Sidgwick  held  that  the  evidence  of 
the  apparition  of  persons  at  the  point  of  death 
to  others  at  a  distance  amounted  to  scientific 
proof.  On  the  question  of  the  actual  communi- 
cation between  spirits  of  the  departed  and 
those  now  living,  the  result  of  the  researches 
of  a  London  committee  of  eminent  men  of  all 
schools  of  thought,  appointed  some  years  ago 
for  this  purpose,  was  sufficiently  suggestive. 
Its  finding,  in  substance,  was  that  communica- 
tions were  made  which  could  only  be  accounted 
for  on  the  supposition  of  an  invisible  personal 
agency ;  but  that  this  agency,  in  the  majority 
of  instances,  seemed  in  point  of  intelligence  to 
be  below  the  normal  human  level.  The  plain 
inference  from  this  would  seem  surely  to  be, 
that  the  souls  we  have  known  and  loved  when 
disengaged  from  the  body  enter  upon  spheres 
of  being  too  refined  and  too  remote  to  be 


340        OURSELVES  AND  THE  UNIVERSE. 

cognised  by  our  mortal  sense,  and  that  those 
within  reach  are  only  inferior  or  degraded 
types. 

What  we  have  mainly  to  note  is  that  life's 
silences  and  separations  are  a  purposed  disci- 
pline. The  pains  here  are  the  spirit's  "  grow- 
ng  pains."  The  heavens  are  mute,  not  be- 
cause there  is  nothing  to  say,  but  because  the 
time  is  not  yet.  Meantime  our  business  is  to 
develop  more  and  more  that  spiritual  sense 
which  gives  us,  here  and  now,  the  vision  of  life 
in  its  wholeness.  "  Heard  you  not  that  sweet 
melodious  music  ?  "  said  Jacob  Behmen  to  his 
son,  when  dying  at  Gorlitz.  There  is  a  more 
than  mortal  music  already  audible  to  attuned 
ears.  The  elect  souls  are  already  free  of  the 
world  behind  the  veil.  They  are  on  pilgrimage 
towards  that  fatherland.  "  For  they  that  say 
such  things  declare  plainly  that  they  seek  a 
country.  .  .  .  But  now  they  desire  a  better 
country,  that  is,  a  heavenly." 


OTHER  WORKS  by  J.  BRIERLEY,  B.A. 

("•/.£."  of  "The  Christian  World.") 


STUDIES    OF    THE    SOUL. 

Third  Edition.    Crown  STO.    Cloth,  3a.6d. 

"  To  the  theological  reviewer,  weary  of  ponderous  tome* 
containing  so  many,  many  pages,  and  so  very  little 
original  thought,  this  small  volume  is  a  pure  delight. 
This  book  reaches  u-s  in  a  second  edition — it  deserves  to  go 
to  a  ticentieth." — TBS  OUTLOOK. 

"  It  is  one  of  the  freshest  books  ice  have  read  for  a  long 
time." — NOKTH  BRITISH  DAILY  MAIL. 

tltj.  B.' is  the  most  thoughtful,  the  most  suggestive, 
and  the  most  helpful  of  modern  essayists." 

CAMBRIDGE  INDEPENDENT  PRESS. 

"  A  better  book  for  the  modern  man  does  not  exist." 

THE  EXAMINES. 

"  Thoughtful  essays  on  man's  complex  nature." 

LIVERPOOL  MKBCCBT. 

"  It  is  the  '  commonplace  philosopher '  at  his  best  and 
most  thoughtful.  Nothing  is  overdrau-n  or  overdriven." 

EXPOSITORY  TIMES. 

"  Mr.  Brierley  is  a  prophet  of  to-day,  and,  as  ice  hold, 
of  the  to-morrow  that  comes  next." — LITERARY  WORLD. 

"  Mr.  Brierley  is  at  once  a  seer  and  a  mystic.  Therg 
it  a  fine  spiritual  aroma  about  hi-s  essays;  the  atmo- 
sphere he  creates  is  stimulating  and  bracing.  .  .  . 
Such  a  work  at  thit  will  live."— BAPTIST  MAOAZINI. 


FROM    PHILISTIA: 
Essays  on  Church  and  World. 

Crown  8vo.    Cloth,  3s.  6d. 

"Both  sweetness  and  light  are  in  them." 

THE  SPECTATOR. 

"  The  volume  as  a  whole  is  excellent.  .  .  .  At 
his  best  Mr.  Brierley  reminds  me  very  much  of  Mr. 
Hamerton,  and  this  is  surely  high  praise." 

BRITISH  WEKKLT. 

"  From  a  vigorous  and  unconventional  pen.  Mr. 
Brierley  has  read  widely  in  all  kinds  of  literature." 

METHODIST  TIMES. 

"  Readers  of  these  delightful  essays  will  find  in  them 
not  only  a  safe  'insurance  against  dulness,'  but  many  a 
happy  and  inspiring  thought  expressed  in  chaste  and 
beautiful  language." — BRADFORD  OBSERVER. 

"  This  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  oftheyear.' 
CROTDON  CHRONICLE. 


QUESTIONS    FOR 

THE    FREE  CHURCHES. 

Crown   8ro.      Cloth,  2s.  6d. 

"Practical,  suggestive,  and  well  worthy  of  the  earnest 
attention  of  all  icho  would  see  the  influence  of  the  Church 
extended  and  adapted  to  the  new  conditions  of  the  present 
hurried,  active  and  restless  age." 

DUNDEE  ADVKKTISSR. 

"A  book  that  should  be  read  by  all  Church  workers." 
CBOYDON  ADVERTISER. 

"  This  it  too  timely  and  able  a  book  to  be  neglected." 

THE  FBI  KM  AN. 

"  A  valuable  contribution  to  an  important  discussion." 
LEICESTER  CHRONICLE. 

"  Mr.  Brierley's  essays  are  short  and  pointed,  and 
are  invariably  worthy  of  frank  and  patient  considera- 
tion."—BRITISH  WEEKLY. 

"  Mr.  Brierley  -wields  a  trenchant  pen,  and  hitt  with 
precision  and  force  many  of  t:,e  hindrances  which  retard 
the  progress  of  the  Free  Churches  in  this  country.  Th* 
book  is  a  healthy  one  and  is  likely  to  do  great  good." 

ESSEX  TELKGRAPH. 


LONDON: 
JAMES  CLAB.KE  &  CO.,  13  <k  14,  FLEET  STBEET. 


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